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LTT635 15 November - 28 November 2013
“Very interesting topics which directly relate to our work. It was great to make contacts and hear about projects which have already tackled issues we are all encountering as part of the LSTF” Dawn Gilbert, Sustainable Transport Officer, Bournemouth Borough Council attended the previous LSTF conference: ‘Re-booting Smarter Travel’ in December 2012
POLICY | PLANNING | FINANCE | DEVELOPMENT
LOCAL
SUSTAINABLE
TRANSPORT
Hosted by:
Supported by:
Organised by:
FUND
MAINSTREAMING
smarter travel Local Sustainable Transport Fund National Conference 3 & 4 December 2013 Manchester Town Hall ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■
Mainstreaming – Embedding smarter travel into general practice Integration - New technology, buses, trains and interchange Active Travel – Walking and cycling initiatives Engagement – Partnership working Monitoring and evaluation Marketing and communications
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LTT635_Mainstreaming_Wraparound_LTT635 12/11/2013 15:46 Page 2
2-DAY EVENT PROGRAMME 3 DECEMBER 2013 - DAY 1: OPTIONAL MORNING BONUS SESSIONS 10.30
Bonus session registration: Delegates register within the Bees area in the Town Hall
11.00
Streamed sessions
(Advance Booking Required. £65 + VAT Add-on to standard delegate rates)
Option 4
Delegates choose to attend 1 of 4...
Option 1 MediacityUK Metrolink to MediaCityUK, a leading hub for the creative and digital sectors, and home for both the BBC and ITV. Visit includes a tour of the site, and opportunities to hear about joint working on sustainable transport.
Finding your way to procure, implement and provide better travel information 10.00 Registration and Coffee
11.35
Where is transport mapping going – what you now need to know Peter Miller, CEO, ITO World • Navigating in the smarter city – a glimpse of the near future • The common reality of disconnected traveller information (Case study) • Delivering a consistent and coherent message across all transport models – on a budget • A single mapping and information database – How Ordnance Survey, Open Data and OpenStreetMap are coming together • Meeting the travel information needs of all users any time, any place, anywhere, any format
11.55
On-street and on-vehicle information technology Speaker TBC • What do customers value most? • Cultural considerations – an international perspective on information provision • Immediate benefits, integration and and futureproofing • Making the right buying decision
12.25
Question & discussion
12.30
Lunch served in the seminar room
10.30 Welcome
Option 2
10.35
Sustainable travel and geographical imaging in Greater Manchester David Hytch, Information Systems Director (Technology Initiatives), TfGM • Linking modes and information • Passenger information methods • Open Data to improve service • Considering the mix of modes and information – Why geographic systems work well
10.55
Lessons from experience – UK and International best practice in transport mapping Peter Warman, Consultant to FWT • The perspective of the traveller – how do we look after different user groups? • The map as a navigation aid • Tracking and GPS. Why don’t we have ‘tom-toms’ in buses? • Where is personal navigation going? • Combining static and real-time information
National Cycling Centre Metrolink to the National Cycling Centre, home of British Cycling. There will be a tour of the velodrome and BMX tracks, and opportunities to hear about Greater Manchester's ambition to increase cyclist numbers by 300% over the next 12 years.
11.30 (Note: Later departure time)
Option 3 City Tower Cycle Hub A walking visit to the flagship City Tower Cycle Hub, with the opportunity to view facilities and hear more about Transport for Greater Manchester's commuter cycling programme.
12.30
11.15
Return to Manchester Town Hall ACT TravelWise Re-launch in the Great Hall
‘Information provision’ not ‘information pollution’ on transport maps Dr. Max Roberts, Department of Psychology University of Essex (author of ‘Underground Maps Unravelled’) • The enduring role of ‘a good map’? • The psychology of mapping • Usable versus beautiful • Cultural considerations • Some International best practices
3 DECEMBER 2013 - DAY 1: WHAT WILL THE LSTF DELIVER? 12.30
Delegate registration: Registration and light refreshments served in the exhibition area
13.20
Keynote- Mainstreaming Smart Travel in Greater Manchester Dr Jon Lamonte, Chief Executive of Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM)
13.30
Panel discussion - Mainstreaming Smarter Travel - and the LSTF Chaired by Prof. Phil Goodwin, University of West of England Panellists: Panellists: Graham Pendlebury, The Department for Transport; Greg Hartshorn, ATKINS; Peter Lipman, Sustrans & Dr Jon Lamonte, Transport for Greater Manchester
15.00
15.40
Break: Refreshments served in the exhibition area
speedlearning 30x case studies from LSTF projects to discuss. Held in the Great Hall and Bees Area.
17.30
Break: Break in the exhibition area
18.00
Welcome to Manchester Dave Newton - Transport Strategy Director, Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM)
18.10
Informal Networking Light bites and drinks party
19.30
Day 1 Close
www.mainstreamsmart.co.uk
LTT635 front page_LTT635_p01 15/11/2013 00:45 Page 1
LTT635 15 November - 28 November 2013
Pollution thwarts M60 capacity boost POLICY | PLANNING | FINANCE | DEVELOPMENT
ROADS
THE HIGHWAYS Agency has put plans on ice to convert hard shoulders on part of Manchester’s M60 orbital motorway into traffic lanes because the resulting traffic flows would trigger exceedances of legal air pollution limits. The HA said opening up the
hard shoulder between junctions 8 and 18 round the west and north of Manchester would have moved traffic nearer to properties and attracted more vehicles to the road. “This would have resulted in new exceedances of air quality levels, particularly in relation to NO2,” a spokeswoman told LTT. “This is the first time we have taken this approach on a major
project scheme in relation to air quality,” she added. The HA has just launched a consultation on implementing mandatory variable speed limits on this section of the motorway. But the Agency remains determined to find a way to increase capacity between junctions 8 and 15, including possibly converting the hard shoulder to a traffic lane,
if a way can be found to reduce the air quality impact. Sian Berry of the Campaign for Better Transport said: “The HA has explicitly acknowledged that laws designed to protect peoples’ health and the environment prevent them from opening the hard shoulder to extra traffic. This should be a precedentsetting decision.”
Cyclist deaths overshadow TfL’s launch of safer junction design
CYCLING
by Andrew Forster
PROVIDING INDEPENDENT NEWS & ANALYSIS SINCE 1989
10-11 Personal travel planning goes digital 2-3 Academics rubbish HS2 study 7 TfL announces appraisal review
12 Viewpoint: Rethink road safety
15 Phil Goodwin: the curious case of DfT cycling forecasts TfL’s new junction design aims to eliminate conflict between cyclists and left-turning traffic
TOP10 1.
Electrification and reopenings in Network Rail’s five-year plan
2. Revised values for time savings herald wider appraisal shake-up
3. Stagecoach appoints TfL bus director to lead council relations 4.
Traffic lanes will be converted to cycle lanes on Blackfriars Road for a new north-south cycle route across central London
mented on the Bow roundabout where ‘early start’ signals give cyclists a headstart over general traffic. Johnson has announced that TfL will be recruiting more than 100 staff – thought to be 128 – to deliver the cycling programme. Traffic engineers, scheme designers and traffic modellers will all be sought. The mayor last week opened the first fully segregated section
of Barclays Superhighway, a twomile extension of route 2 between Bow and Stratford. The route features ‘bus stop bypasses’ where the cycle route passes behind bus stops to allow cyclists to overtake stationary buses without entering the carriageway. The mayor has also announced plans for a new north-south cycle route across central London from King’s Cross to Elephant & Castle via Blackfriars Bridge.
Stagecoach attacks plans to charge for Cambridge P&R
5. Multi-£bn plan for SE Wales Metro
6. Electric double-deck bus for York 7. Variable speed limit for trunk roads 8.
Will London Gateway be the freight industry’s first port of call?
9. TfL ‘needs long-term bus plan’ 10. Transport masters numbers increase
most read stories on
01 November – 14 November 2013
TRANSPORT FOR London has unveiled a new design of junction to boost cycling safety. But the plans have been overshadowed by five cyclist fatalities on London’s roads within the space of just nine days. The deaths take the total number of cyclists killed in London this year to 13, one below the total for 2012. Reacting to the deaths, London mayor Boris Johnson said this week: “Unless people obey the laws of the road and people actively take account of the signals that we put in, there’s no amount of traffic engineering that we invest in that is going to save people’s lives. Some of the cases that we've seen in the last few days really make your heart bleed because you can see that people have taken decisions that really did put their lives in danger. You cannot blame the victim in these circumstances.” But Green assembly member Darren Johnson said: “The mayor mustn’t keep dodging responsibility for these tragic deaths and serious injuries on London’s roads. Four out of the five deaths of cyclists in the last nine days have involved either his blue paint or his red buses. “The mayor’s comments this morning, which targeted cyclists breaking the law as the primary cause of death and serious injury is an attempt to blame the victims, rather than tackling the real problem of HGVs, buses and
dangerous junctions.” The mayor has just announced the latest steps he and TfL are taking to give cyclists greater priority on the road network and make cycling safer. The new junction design aims to eliminate conflicts between cyclists and left-turning traffic – a common cause of accidents – and features fully-segregated approaches for cyclists and cycle-specific traffic signals (see top image). Left-turning cyclists and general traffic will receive a green light at different times. When cyclists have a green light to go straight ahead or turn left, general traffic will only have a green light to travel straight ahead or turn right. When general traffic is given permission to turn left, the cycle traffic would have a red light. The image supplied by TfL suggests that cyclists will be unable to turn right at these junctions. The new junction arrangements will initially be implemented on Whitechapel High Street in east London as part of a programme of measures to improve safety on the Barclays Cycle Superhighway 2, between Aldgate and Bow. The DfT has also granted TfL permission to trial cycle-specific traffic signals. Currently, cycle logos cannot generally be displayed on the red light of a signal head. TfL says allowing the logo on red signals will give all road users greater clarity that the traffic signal is exclusively for cyclists. A spokesman said the new signals had just been imple-
TransportXtra.com/ltt
LTT635_p2-3_HS2 inquiry2_LTT635_p02-03 14/11/2013 19:43 Page 2
Sparks fly as academics contest KPMG’s analysis of HS2 benefits
LTT635 15 November - 28 November 2013
2 News
The Government’s high-speed rail plans received a big boost when the media reported consultant KPMG’s prediction that the project would deliver £15bn of productivity benefits a year for the British economy. But two academic specialising in spatial economics told MPs last week that KPMG’s work contained grave methodological errors and should never have been published. Andrew Forster reports IT’S NOT every day that a committee of MPs pores over the detail of a transport consultant’s report. But that’s what happened last week when the Treasury select committee took evidence on KPMG’s study into the regional economic impacts of HS2. KPMG’s report, commissioned by Government company HS2 Ltd and published in September, gave a much-needed boost to the troubled £50bn project, containing as it did the headline-grabbing prediction that the high-speed railway from London to the West Midlands, Manchester and Leeds will deliver £15bn of annual GDP benefits for the British economy (LTT 20 Sep). That conclusion has now been embedded in the revised strategic case for HS2, published by the Government last month. HS2’s critics were quick to dismiss the consultant’s findings. Campaign group Stop HS2 claimed the figure had simply been “made up” to further the case for the project. But the consultant’s analysis also troubled academics specialising in spatial economics too. Henry Overman, professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics, wrote a blog saying that the methodology employed by KPMG was “technically wrong” and the size of forecast benefits was “possibly out by orders of magnitude” (LTT 04 Oct). So who is right? Last week the treasury select committee tried to get to the bottom of matters, taking evidence from KPMG, Overman and another critic of the consultant’s work, Dan Graham, professor of statistical modelling at Imperial College London. Graham’s research has played a vital role in informing the DfT’s guidance on appraising the wider economic benefits (WEBs) of transport projects, which is very different approach to the method used by KPMG. The hearing seemed to have all the ingredients necessary for some explosions and the exchanges between the MPs and witnesses did not disappoint.
A conservative estimate
First up were the KPMG duo of Richard Threlfall who, as head of infrastructure, building and construction, leads the firm’s work on HS2, and Lewis Atter, a former Treasury civil servant who is now a partner in KPMG’s global infrastructure and projects group, heading up the firm’s infrastructure strategy business. MPs first wanted to know some facts and figures about the report, HS2 regional economic impacts. They were pleasantly surprised when Threlfall revealed the cost had been £242,000 (including VAT). He added that the work had been completed in four months by a team of six KPMG staff as well as sub-contracted work undertaken by Connected Economics. Committee chair Andrew Tyrie wondered how confident the consultants were about their finding that the full Y-network (London to the West Midlands, Manchester and Leeds) would deliver £15bn of GDP benefits per annum (in 2013 prices). Was that, he wondered, a “considered estimate or something less than that”. “I’d say it was a considered estimate,” Atter replied. “We’ve based our approach here on the best available evidence, we’ve asked the questions about what we can see in the real world in terms of different economic performance between cities, how much of that is explained by differences in connectivity… and we’ve asked what difference will HS2 make to that… So it is very considered.” To come up with the figure, KPMG examined how patterns of economic activity varied across markets and
Committee chair Andrew Tyrie (top left) was puzzled by KPMG’s confidence in its approach to assessing the economic impacts of HS2. KPMG’s Lewis Atter (top right) said the £15bn was if anything a conservative estimate of benefits. Henry Overman (bottom left) said KPMG had “made up” its methodology and Dan Graham (bottom right) said he wouldn’t have used KPMG’s “strange” approach
There is no perfect way of addressing the exam question we were posed. We have very transparently set out what we believe is a reasonable, probably conservative, approach to getting at the key question. Lewis Atter, KPMG
geographies and how these differences related to levels of transport connectivity using four measures: rail connectivity to labour; rail connectivity to business; road connectivity to labour; and road connectivity to business. But the method posed challenges, notably because the four connectivity measures were strongly correlated. Atter
explained: “Given the question we were being asked here – what impact will HS2 have? – what you need to be worried about is whether what you’re seeing out there in the real world data in terms of differences between business-to-business connectivity is solely a function of differences in business-to-business connectivity by rail or whether it’s actually partially a function of labour connectivity by rail or partially a function of road connectivity to business or road connectivity to labour.” KPMG devised a technique to apportion the influences between the four connectivity measures but admitted in the report that the technique“does not have a firm statistical foundation”. It was this method that produced the £15bn estimate. The consultant also conducted a sensitivity test using another approach based on mode shares, which reduced annual GDP benefits to £8bn. Tyrie was having difficulty reconciling Atter’s confidence in the results with the admission that the method used to generate the £15bn estimate was non-standard. “Let’s just clarify where we’ve got to this morning,” said Tyrie. “You’ve agreed that the £15bn per annum return for 60 years is a forecast, and you’ve agreed that it
LTT635_p2-3_HS2 inquiry2_LTT635_p02-03 14/11/2013 19:43 Page 3
TransportXtra.com/ltt is heavily based on a piece of statistical analysis that you initially told me was reliable and that your description of it as reliable you feel is consistent with what appears to be a disclaimer in your report, which is that this approach ‘does not have a firm statistical foundation’. To a layman that does seem somewhat contradictory Mr Atter.” “We are saying that there is no perfect way of addressing the exam question that we were posed,” Atter replied. “We have very transparently set out what we believe is a reasonable, probably conservative, approach to getting at the key question.” Amplifying this belief that the method had delivered a conservative estimate of benefits, Atter pointed out that the report did not include HS2 Ltd’s most recent work to make best use of the capacity HS2 will free up on the conventional rail network. Furthermore, he said KPMG’s analysis hadn’t considered the impact of a station at Manchester Airport, or the benefits of HS2 for freight and international trade. On the other hand, the study also hadn’t considered the DfT’s reduced value of business travel time savings for rail travellers, which would have the effect of driving down benefits. But Atter said the list of things that would put the benefits up was longer than the list of things that would reduce them. He said KPMG was talking with HS2 Ltd about updating the work to reflect last month’s updated economic case for the project (LTT 01 Nov). Atter acknowledged that the KPMG method was incompatible with the Treasury’s Green Book, the bible for the appraisal of Government projects. But he suggested the method actually delivered more insightful results than those produced by the DfT’s WebTAG guidance. “This is very, very different from standard DfT cost-benefit appraisals; this is asking not about time savings, this is asking about productivity and output in the economy, relaxing a lot of the restrictive assumptions that the DfT makes,” he said. “So, for example, the standard approach of the DfT holds land-use fixed so a transport scheme whatever it is won’t change where people live, won’t change where the jobs are, won’t change the kind of jobs they do. We relaxed all that, we don’t consider time savings, we focus in on what we think is the fundamental first order issue, which is the impact on GDP.” Atter said the method had been discussed with HS2 Ltd’s advisory panel of experts. The approach was also similar to the way some city-regions were looking at the economic impact of transport investment. “It is true to say that no other national project has been looked at in this way but it is not true to say that projects on a regular basis aren’t looked at like this. If you ask how any of our major cities addresses the impact of transport, whether it’s a Greater Manchester, a Leeds, a Sheffield, a Birmingham or Glasgow, all of them are increasingly looking at transport through this real economy lens.” KPMG has been an adviser to many of these areas.
An academic critique
Tyrie thanked Atter and Threlfall for their evidence and told them they may be asked to return to give further evidence at a later date. Next up were Henry Overman and Dan Graham. The academics had been listening to KPMG’s evidence and Tyrie was eager to know what they made of it. Graham spoke first. “The £15bn, to me,
News 3 may be true, but certainly nothing in that report indicates to me that it is true,” he said. “I don’t think the statistical work is reliable,” he added, before identifying three key concerns. “The way the work was done, it kind of attributes to connectivity all the things that affect productivity without incorporating them in the model. So if you’ve got a model that’s only got connectivity really as the key thing that affects productivity, you’re going to attribute lots of things to connectivity that actually just happen to be correlated with it, that aren’t down to the connectivity itself. “The second issue is it doesn’t deal with the problem of reverse causality: we tend to put transport in places that are more productive so the relationship between transport and productivity is bi-directional.
They [KPMG] apply this statistical procedure, well it’s not a statistical procedure, that’s the point; they apply this procedure which is essentially made up.
Henry Overman, Professor of economic geography, London School of Economics “The third issue is that this business of what they call ‘spreading the elasticity’ isn’t done according to any conventional statistical approach that I can think of. The problem they had was a problem called ‘equivalence of outcomes’ where what they wanted to know was how do we apportion the connectivity effects across different modes [of transport] but the statistics wouldn’t let them do it because all these things were so highly correlated. My approach to that would be don’t try and do it, it wouldn’t be to use some strange approach to apportion or spread that effect.” Overman was equally scathing. “They apply this statistical procedure, well it’s not a statistical procedure, that’s the point; they apply this procedure, which is essentially made up, that provides them with an estimate. And this is something that really shouldn’t be being done in a situation where we’re trying to inform public debate.” Tyrie interjected: “That’s a very serious allegation, you’re saying they’ve just made it up.” “If you’re trying to get at something like the impact of connectivity on productivity using a set of statistical techniques, you need to play by the rules,” said Overman. “There are two technical problems with what they’ve done. Number one, they had the four connectivity estimates that they couldn’t separate out the individual effects of, so they looked at them one at a time. Looking at them one at a time will always bias upwards the impact of any one individual effect because you will attribute to good rail connectivity the fact that places with good rail connectivity also have good car connectivity.
“Then they said ‘now that we’ve got these individual effects, how are we going to combine them?’ And the way they combined them was completely non-standard and further biases up the effects. “That part of [the work] that gets to the £15bn number ... has no statistical basis. They are basically doing something completely non-standard, which gives them an estimate of £15bn.” Turning to KPMG’s sensitivity test in which the benefits fell to £8bn, Overman said: “I would much rather have seen the £8bn come out as their central estimate [but] that would still be a large overestimate.” He said the £15bn figure should be reduced by a factor of six to eight. Overman pointed out that the economic case for HS2 already includes wider economic benefits (WEBs), such as agglomeration, calculated using the DfT’s recommended methodology. “I wouldn’t view those [the KPMG figures] as additional to the WEBs that get the benefit:cost ratio [of the full Y network] to 2.3:1, I would see them as an alternative estimate of WEBs,” he said. Graham contrasted KPMG’s approach unfavourably with the way the DfT’s appraisal guidance has developed. “Benefit:cost analysis has been established over several decades now and there’s a strong theoretical basis for it. Over the decades we’ve built up empirical evidence, which has been rigorously reviewed both by Government and academics through the peer review process. And that counts also for wider economic benefits, which are one of the more recent additions to benefit:cost analysis. “Now, none of this is perfect but we understand the assumptions behind it, we understand the theory and the empirical evidence gets reviewed, we can all look at it and debate it. The problem with the KPMG approach is it hasn’t got that history, it’s not got the academic support, it’s not got the theoretical support.”
Alarm bells failed
Overman wondered why the DfT or HS2 Ltd’s advisory panel of experts had failed to spot the problems with KPMG’s approach. “My feeling with this is that at some point HS2 Ltd, the DfT or the peer review panel should have pointed out that there were several parts of the report that were problematic and not in line with current guidance. I don’t understand why the £15bn figure was allowed to go out there [be published] when within the report itself the sensitivity test suggested accounting for that one problem alone halved the estimate [to £8bn].” Overman said it was important to discover what the panel of experts had said about the study. “If it said, ‘Oh, this is all fine’, then we want to question what happened to make that peer review advice fail. If the peer review advice was, ‘No this is unacceptable, this method is non-standard, it really shouldn’t be out there’ then I think you want to understand whether it was KPMG who said, ‘No it is, we’re not going to reply to this’ or whether it was HS2 Ltd or the DfT that just said, ‘Ok, we’re going to publish it anyhow’.” Overman was a member of the advisory panel but quit when HS2 Ltd’s remit changed. “I felt the change in status of HS2 Ltd from providing independent advice to the Government to being a promoter of the scheme meant that I no longer wanted to be involved on a consultancy basis with them.”
Local Transport Today provides fortnightly coverage of the total urban and regional UK transport scene from the viewpoint of planners, policy makers, traffic engineers, analysts, investors and managers of resources involved. Editorial Office Apollo House 359 Kennington Lane London SE11 5QY. Tel: 0845 270 7875 Fax: 0845 270 7961 Email: ed.ltt@landor.co.uk Publisher/Editorial Director Peter Stonham Editor Andrew Forster Contributing Writers John Helm, David Crawford Design & Production production@landor.co.uk Managing Director Rod Fletcher Client Partnership Manager Daniel Simpson Tel: 0845 270 7861 Advertising Office Tel: 0845 270 7861 Fax: 0845 270 7960 E-mail: ads.ltt@landor.co.uk Subscriptions Tel: 0845 270 7900 Fax: 0845 270 7920 E-mail: subs@landor.co.uk Subscribe on line TransportXtra.com/ltt Address for subscriptions HPC Publishing Drury Lane, St Leonards-on-Sea East Sussex TN38 9BJ Accounts Irina Cocks Tel: 0845 270 7854 Fax: 0845 270 7960 359 Kennington Lane London SE11 5QY LTT is available on subscription only. The annual UK subscription rate is £140 including dispatch by first class post and supply of special supplements. The overseas rate is £180 for Europe and £220 for the rest of the world.
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LTT635 page 4_LTT635_p0 14/11/2013 22:37 Page 4
4 News
In Brief
Town bypasses pledged on A96 Bypasses of Nairn, Forres, Elgin, Keith and Inverurie will be included in plans to complete the dualling of the 99-mile A96 trunk road between Inverness and Aberdeen, Scotland’s transport minister Keith Brown said this week. Only 11 miles of the road is currently dualled. Studies are underway of eight route options for the Inverness-Nairn section and nine options for the Nairn bypass. Preferred options for these sections will be announced next year.
Orbital road for Norwich? Norfolk County Council is to commission a feasibility study into extending the proposed Norwich Northern Distributor Road (NDR) all the way round to the A47 to the west of the city, completing an orbital road. The council is currently promoting the £148.5m dual carriageway NDR, which will connect the A47 at Postwick Hub, to the east of the city, round to the A1067 in the north-west. The new study will examine options for the A1067-A47 connection, which is likely to be environmentally controversial, passing through the picturesque Wensum Valley. The DfT is providing £86.5m of the NDR/Postwick Hub costs with the council underwriting the remaining £60m. Norfolk will submit the NDR and Postwick Hub to the Planning Inspectorate for development consent in the next few weeks. The council says construction of the road could begin in spring 2015.
HA reforms a waste of time, says Labour The Labour Party has criticised the Government’s plan to turn the Highways Agency into a Government company (LTT 01 Nov), describing it as a “policy without purpose”. Shadow transport minister Richard Burden said ministers were “wasting time creating unnecessary legislation and topdown institutional reorganisations”.
Higher speeds for tractors? The DfT is consulting on increasing the speed limit for tractors from 20 to 25mph. Consultation closes on 30 January.
Welsh freight priorities explored The Welsh Government has set up a task force to advise on freight matters. The group includes representatives of road freight, rail freight and shipping/ports, and will be chaired by Brian Curtis, a former president of the Welsh TUC. It has been asked to report back in the spring.
LTT635 15 November - 28 November 2013
TfGM identifies tram-train routes but funding challenge remains TRAM-TRAIN
by Andrew Forster
TRANSPORT FOR Greater Manchester has identified the heavy rail and Metrolink routes that offer the best potential for tramtrain vehicle operation. Top priority is the Marple to Manchester Piccadilly via Bredbury heavy rail line. Transport strategy director Dave Newton said that, upon conversion, Marple services could alternate between running to Bury and Altrincham. For a six-minute headway service, about 24 new tram-train vehicles would be required. TfGM says it would cost £200m to build now (with a 66% contingency). The existing Metrolink line between Manchester and Altrincham is another candidate for tram-train operation. Newton said this could overcome the bottleneck on the line through Navigation Road station where heavy rail and Metrolink services
currently run on parallel singletrack routes. TfGM sees the Manchester Piccadilly-Glossop railway as a candidate for a second phase of tram-train. “There is insufficient city centre capacity to accommodate both Marple and Glossop routes at ten trains per hour, although it may well be feasible in the long-term to accommodate both routes either through terminating certain services at Piccadilly station or through operating each route at a six train per hour frequency,” said Newton.
Another possibility for phase two would be the Manchester Piccadilly–Hazel Grove line via Stockport. Newton said this could be the first stage of developing a tram-train route through the south of the conurbation, connecting Stockport, Manchester Airport and Altrincham. A Stockport-Altrincham line should be considered “as part of a possible future study of transport to the Manchester Airport area”, which would consider the transport needs of the ‘Airport City’ Enterprise Zone and the pro-
posed Manchester Airport HS2 high-speed rail station. “An interchange at Baguley could be a key element, together with the western loop section of the Manchester Airport extension,” said Newton. Further examination of the suitability of the Manchester-Wigan Wallgate via Atherton line for tram-trains is proposed. But Newton said there appeared to be no business case for tram-train operation over the Mid-Cheshire line beyond Altrincham to Hale and Knutsford.
South Yorkshire Integrated Transport Authority has endorsed the idea of banning bicycles from the new tram-train vehicles that will operate between Sheffield and Rotherham Parkgate. Sheffield City Council and cycle campaign groups want bikes to be carried on the vehicles, being manufactured by
Vossloh, but South Yorkshire PTE says bicycles could only be accommodated by moving the priority seating in the low-floor area, to the detriment of mobilityimpaired passengers. The ultimate decision will be for operator, Stagecoach Supertram, which has already voiced concern about the safety implica-
tions of allowing bicycles on the vehicles. Trams are banned from the existing tram fleet. Vossloh is manufacturing seven vehicles for the £60m trial, which is funded by the DfT. The tram-train services via Meadowhall to Rotherham Parkgate are due to commence operating in 2016.
proposing a zonal fares system, which should result in the majority of passengers being better or no worse off. But Gateshead says the proportion of passengers who would experience an increase of more than 20% to their fares is higher in Gateshead than any of the four other Tyne and Wear metropolitan districts. The council says discussions with the PTE suggest this is because many Gateshead passengers would be crossing a zonal boundary. “Because these trips are short they are currently some of the cheaper bus fares but under the new system they would be
more expensive as they represent a two-zone trip,” said council chief executive Jane Robinson. “Sadly, this effect is almost inevitable in introducing a simplified zonal system.” The closing date for consultation on the QCS is 22 November. Gateshead says the Labour-controlled Tyne and Wear Integrated Transport Authority is due to choose between the QCS and a voluntary partnership agreement next March. This would be just weeks before the ITA is scrapped if the Government approves plans to set up a North East Combined Authority (see back page).
agency model as described during the passage of the Transport Act (NI) 2011 – namely to remove the conflicting roles of the transport minister as provider, policy maker and regulator – is adopted. • That the DRD reviews future budget allocations to ensure a better balance between expenditure on roads and public transport. • That Translink’s group chief executive and chief operating officer cease to be full members of the Northern Ireland Transport Holding Company board, but remain accountable to it for operational matters. The report was commissioned
partly in response to criticisms about Translink’s lack of transparency, and its perceived ‘cosy’ relationship with the DRD. Responding to the report, NI transport minister Danny Kennedy said the 2011 Act contained a clause that most public transport services would continue to be provided by NITHC/ Translink.
Bicycle ban likely on South Yorkshire’s tram-trains
Council backs QCs despite fare fears London to
BUSES
GATESHEAD COUNCIL has endorsed Nexus’s bus Quality Contract plans for Tyne and Wear despite concerns that many council residents will end up paying higher fares. Labour-controlled Gateshead says the Quality Contract Scheme (QCS) “is the approach most likely to deliver the stable, affordable and comprehensive network of bus services required to support the council’s wider vision and objectives”. Nexus, the Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Executive, is
Franchising backed by NI Assembly PUBLIC TRANSPORT
A COMMITTEE of the Northern Ireland Assembly has urged ministers to introduce competitive tendering for some public transport and to shift some of the roads budget to bus and rail. The Committee for the Department of the Regional Development (DRD) makes eight recommendations including: • That the DRD proactively introduces tendering and franchising for privately-owned public transport operators, including the Belfast Rapid Transit project. • That the previously agreed
Report on the inquiry into comprehensive transport delivery structures is available at http://tinyurl.com/lm2x8mp
host electric bus trials
BUSES
TWO ELECTRIC buses will take to London’s streets within the next few weeks, the first of three trials of the technology in the capital. Two 12-metre single deck vehicles built by Chinese manufacturer Build Your Dreams (BYD) are being prepared for operation on routes 507 (VictoriaWaterloo) and 521 (Waterloo-London Bridge). Go Ahead London is leasing the vehicles, which will be charged overnight at their depot. Transport for London is to introduce four Optare 10.6-metre single deck buses next spring on suburban routes operating from Hounslow garage. They are partfunded from the DfT’s Green Bus Fund. TfL is also planning a trial of four double-deck diesel-electric hybrid buses using wireless (induction) charging to extend their range. This is part of a project organised by international public transport organisation UITP covering eight cities, and part-funded by a European Union grant programme. The buses will operate on a yet-to-be-announced route for at least a year.
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LEPs get to work on setting transport priorities but tough questions remain
News 5
England’s Local Enterprise Partnerships are busy identifying what transport priorities to include in their strategic economic plans, which the Government will use to allocate the new Single Local Growth Fund. But big questions remain about how the new system will work. Andrew Forster reports
LOCAL AUTHORITIES and Local Enterprise Partnerships across England are gearing up for the biggest shake-up in years to how local transport is funded. From April 2015 more than £1bn of local transport funding a year will be channelled into the Government’s new £2bn Single Local Growth Fund. A proportion of the funding is being allocated on a formula basis but a big slice will be allocated according to the quality of strategic economic plans (SEPs) currently being prepared by the Local Enterprise Partnerships, which bring together local government and the business community. LEPs have to submit their draft SEPs to Government by Christmas and so last week’s LTT conference ‘LEPs and the new transport agenda’ was an opportune time to hear about progress and explore some of the thornier questions that the reforms pose. There remains huge uncertainty about the new system, said Tony Ciaburro, Northamptonshire’s director of environment, development and transport, and transport committee chair of ADEPT (the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport). Among the most frequent questions he was asked were, “What’s going on, and how’s it going to work?” Graham Pendlebury, the DfT’s director of local transport, provided an overview of the new system, which owes much to Lord Heseltine’s No stone unturned report into local economic growth (LTT 9 Nov 12). The DfT is the biggest contributor to the Single Local Growth Fund, putting in £1.19bn, of which £819m is local transport major scheme funding, £200m integrated transport block, and £100m Local Sustainable Transport Fund (the latter only for 2015/16). With no ring-fencing of funding, transport projects could receive more, the same, or less than the DfT puts in. Pendlebury seemed not unduly concerned with this arrangement, expressing confidence that LEPs saw transport as a major priority for spending, a view endorsed by David Frost, chair of the LEP Network. Indeed, Pendlebury was keen to put a positive slant on the reforms, saying the Single Local Growth Fund gave LEPs the opportunity to secure “some serious money” for transport projects. A team of four ministers, chaired by Cabinet Office cities minister Greg Clark, will assess the SEPs. Liberal Democrat transport minister Baroness Kramer will be batting for transport, with the other members of the team being housing minister Kris Hopkins and business and enterprise minister Michael Fallon. Pendlebury said SEPs should be ambitious and present clear rationales for interventions that offer value for money and are deliverable. He voiced concern about the track record of transport scheme delivery, suggesting that the slippage of schemes was a “little bit endemic”. LEPs will submit their final SEPs to the Government at the end of March, and ministers will then announce growth deals and funding settlements in the summer. Although the Government has guaranteed at least £2bn to the Single Local Growth Fund annually through to 2020/21, the length of next summer’s funding settlements remain unclear. Government guidance says that, alongside grant allocations for 2015/16, ministers will award up to £5bn of the £10bn identified for 2016/17–2020/21 to multi-year capital programmes. Pendlebury said the DfT’s primary interest would be to review the overall transport strategy outlined in the SEPs rather than scrutinising individual transport projects contained within them “line-by-line”. Nevertheless,
Graham Pendlebury (left) said the DfT had no intention of scrutinising LEP transport projects “line-by-line”. Tony Travers (right) said LEPs were “less legitimate than local government, pure and simple”.
he said the Department was likely to take a “pretty close look” at transport projects costing “tens of millions of pounds a pop”.
A democratic deficit?
The Government’s decision to give LEPs the job of identifying transport investment priorities has not been universally welcomed by the local government community and conference delegates heard concerns that the new arrangements will create a democratic deficit. “LEPs and local transport bodies are not local government,” said Professor Tony Travers of the London School of Economics. “At the margin they are less legitimate than local government, pure and simple.” Ben King, a principal transport planner at Central Bedfordshire Council, wondered how small-scale schemes such as road safety measures and bus stop improvements would be delivered in the future. These are typically funded from the DfT’s integrated transport block (ITB) allocation, which is currently paid to local authorities. From April 2015, half the £400m annual ITB will be absorbed into the Single Local Growth Fund and King predicted that councils would find themselves unable to meet local residents’ aspirations. With the overriding focus of the Single Local Growth Fund being the economy, many practitioners believe LEPs will prioritise road investments above public transport, walking and cycling schemes. Campaign for Better Transport chief executive Stephen Joseph urged LEPs to look beyond road improvements, stating: “Economic growth doesn’t have to mean more traffic.” Tony Travers wondered if part of the Government’s rationale for giving the LEPs the say in identifying transport priorities was because of concern that councils were a bit too interested in public transport, whereas business leaders were more likely to prioritise roads. Pendlebury said LEPs should consider the full range of options to foster economic growth. “It’s not just about shiny new roads,” he said, showing a slide listing light rail, pinchpoints, maintenance, ‘smart’ technologies and town centre improvements as other possible interventions. Schemes such as better cycle networks could also be appropriate, he added. The Single Local Growth Fund has superceded the DfT’s own proposals to devolve the local major transport
scheme funding to local transport bodies (LTBs) from April 2015. The fledgling LTBs, led by local authorities, submitted their funding priorities to the DfT this summer but LEPs are now in the process of deciding whether these schemes are their priorities too. Laura Shoaf, Black Country director of transport for the Association of Black Country Authorities in the West Midlands, said the transport priorities in her area’s SEP would not be identical to the LTB’s priorities. “The LTBs have found the sands have shifted underneath them and that is a challenge,” she said. Shoaf wondered how the Government would compare the quality of SEP submissions. How, for instance, would it assess proposals for, say, a new junction on the M25 with one on the M5 in the West Midlands, particularly if the appraisals of the economic growth benefits were made using different techniques. She also pointed out that the DfT’s appraisal requirements for transport schemes, which will continue to apply under the Single Local Growth Fund, were more onerous than those of other sectors that could also be seeking a share of the cash. “Housing projects will not have to go through anything like as rigorous an approach as transport,” she said. While councils and LEPs are focused on making the new arrangements work, Tony Travers wondered how long the new structures would last. “I’d be very surprised if LEPs and local transport bodies survived a change of Government,” he said. But Alex Pratt, chairman of the Buckinghamshire Thames Valley LEP, challenged this assessment. “There is no prospect of LEPs being removed at the next General Election,” he said, based on conversations he had had with Labour politicians. LTT understands that Labour is reluctant to abolish the LEPs, concerned that doing so would send out a message that the party is anti-business. But former shadow transport secretary, Maria Eagle, said a Labour Government would reform the new funding system, channelling all funding to local authorities, abolishing local transport bodies, and giving LEPs an advisory role on spending priorities (LTT 20 Sep). ● About 70 delegates attended the event in London, which was sponsored by Bircham Dyson Bell, supported by the DfT and organised in association with local authority officer association ADEPT, the LEP Network, and the Local Government Technical Advisers Group (TAG).
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6 News
In Brief
No light at end of the Woodhead tunnels Two disused Victorian rail tunnels under the Pennines on the former ‘Woodhead route’ between Manchester and Sheffield will be sealed up following the Government’s decision not to purchase them for possible future transport use. The National Grid recently ceased using the tunnels for high voltage cabling after installing new cables in the parallel Woodhead tunnel built in 1953 (the Woodhead route closed to rail in 1981). The Government consulted earlier this year on buying the Victorian tunnels but transport minister Stephen Hammond said: “If an additional rail route was ever required between Manchester and Sheffield, it is unlikely that even the modern tunnel would be suitable for re-use and, given advances in tunneling technology the best solution is most likely to be the construction of a new tunnel.”
NR consults on Hope Valley upgrade Network Rail is consulting on plans to increase rail capacity on the Hope Valley line between Sheffield and Manchester. The new loops and other infrastructure in the Grindleford and Dore areas will require a Transport and Works Act Order and an application will be submitted to the Government next spring. The projects are part of the wider Northern Hub scheme to increase rail capacity, and could be delivered by the end of 2018.
Redditch rail line capacity boost The DfT has granted development consent for Network Rail’s planned capacity improvements on the Redditch railway branch in Worcestershire. The works include a two-mile double track section on the single-track branchline.
‘Norwich in ninety’ The DfT has set up ‘Norwich in 90’, a taskforce to explore ways of cutting the rail journey time between London and Norwich from two hours to 90 minutes.
North Wales rail priorities studied The Welsh Government has set up a working group to study ways of improving North Wales rail services. An initial report will be prepared by the end of next month and a final report later next year.
Wave and pay on Merseyrail Merseyrail passengers can now use contactless payment cards for travel. The system currently accepts MasterCard and VISA, with American Express coming on board next year. Passengers can use the cards to pay up to £20.
LTT635 15 November - 28 November 2013
Green light for Bristol BRT as inspector rejects critics’ case BUSES
by Andrew Forster
THE GOVERNMENT has granted Bristol and North Somerset councils the power to build the Ashton Vale to Temple Meads bus rapid transit scheme. Transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin endorsed the conclusions of the Transport and Works Act inquiry inspector that the scheme, which includes a section of guideway, would provide “significant savings in overall journey times for existing and future public transport passengers” and offered the opportunity for better reliability, frequencies and higher quality services. The BRT plan had been fiercely contested by opponents at the public inquiry, with some suggesting that the route should be changed and others suggesting that the plan should be
scrapped in favour of other modes, including ultra-light rail. But the inspector rejected their ideas. Ultra-light rail would be less flexible than a bus-based scheme, he said. He said installing bus priority on the Hotwell Road, the existing corridor used by the Long Ashton park-and-ride bus, was unlikely to deliver an improved bus service because the road already suffered congestion and was “likely to see further increases in traffic in the future”. Installing bus lanes on the corridor “would be at the expense of kerbside parking in some areas and a significant loss of highway capacity for other vehicles.” Since the inspector submitted his report to ministers, Bristol’s mayor George Ferguson has announced a revision to the BRT route, running it on the Cumberland Road corridor instead of taking it via the Harbourside and
over the Prince Street bridge (LTT 28 Jun). Bristol City Council is to submit a planning application to itself for the change of route early next year. The TWA inspector was sceptical about the Cumberland Road option, saying it would “not provide the necessary degree of segregation to ensure the quality and reliability of public transport for the future”. The tender for the construction contracts for the route will be advertised before the end of the year. There will be two contracts: one for the main route and the other for the Ashton Avenue bridge refurbishment. Once firm prices have been obtained the councils will be able to secure full approval for the project. The DfT has pledged £35m towards the £52m outturn cost of the scheme, with local contributions filling the gap. As well as being used by the
“The coalition government has invested more in this area than any previous government. Since the beginning of 2012, we have announced £159m of new money for cycle infrastructure. We have also invested £600m through the Local Sustainable Transport Fund. “The National Transport Model forecasts are based on the impact of smarter measures. The table supplied [to MPs] show the predicted level of cycling when all other transport factors are taken into account. These include population projections and the relevant cost of motoring.”
TRAVEL BEHAVIOUR
Cycling will decline after 2015, DfT predicts
CYCLING
THE DFT this week defended forecasts predicting that the amount of cycling will decline from 2015. Transport minister Robert Goodwill recently told Parliament that cycle trips would rise from 1.2 billion in 2010 to 1.4 billion in 2015 but then fall to 1.3 billion in 2020. Cycle miles are also forecast to follow a similar patter, LTT columnist Phil Goodwin questions the forecasts in his column this week (see page 15). But the DfT this week stood by them. A spokeswoman told LTT:
New enforcement system for yellow box junctions
ENFORCEMENT
A NEW system has been launched for yellow box junction enforcement. Developed by traffic control specialists Vysionics ITS, the VECTOR YB is designed to give evidentially-acceptable proof that junction exits were not clear when a driver entered a yellow box and that the Highway Code has therefore been broken. The system uses a combination of ANPR cameras to identify vehicles, and radar to locate and
track them in two-dimensional space in varying weather conditions. It then creates an evidential record file containing timestamped ANPR plate matches, offence data including box dwell time and context views of the vehicle. Currently, the only councils that have the powers to enforce yellow box junction offences are the London boroughs and Transport for London. The Local Government Association has been pressing the DfT to extend the powers to councils elsewhere.
903 Ashton Vale park-and-ride service, which is currently operated by FirstGroup under contract to the council, the route is likely to be used by bus services from North Somerset, such as FirstGroup’s X1, 354 and 361. The local authorities recently sought operator views on how the route should be operated. One possibility is a Quality Partnership Scheme for the park-and-ride Metrobus service. The councils will own the guideway section of the route and are considering charging track access charges for operators to use the route, as Cambridgeshire does on the Cambridgeshire guided busway. Planning applications for the Hengrove to North Fringe BRT scheme will be submitted to Bristol and South Gloucestershire early next year.
Change travel behaviour to avoid jams, says TfL
TRANSPORT FOR London is stepping up a travel demand management (TDM) programme to try and alter travel behaviours at the busiest times of day, during times of disruption to transport networks, and during major events. Building on the experiences of using TDM techniques during last summer’s Olympics, TfL has established a Travel Demand Management board, whose membership includes the DfT, Network Rail and the Association of Train Operating Companies. The board is overseeing an emerging programme of projects. Transport commissioner Sir Peter Hendy said TfL would be releasing data later this year about the times and crowding of the busiest London Underground stations broken down into 15minute time slots. “This data will be presented alongside information about the options available to customers who have the flexibility to make small changes to the time of travel or their route,” said Hendy. This could include journey times by foot and by bike. Hendy said that one of the “most significant” early projects would be to use TDM messages for Network Rail’s redevelopment of London Bridge station.
Avoid peak times on the Tube, says TfL
Train operators who serve the station are involved in the planning of the communications campaign. TfL has also begun giving travellers advice on the southern section of the Northern line between Tooting Bec and Clapham North. The section is exceptionally busy between 08.30 and 09.00 with passengers sometimes having to wait two or more trains before they can board. TfL is highlighting how small changes to journey times could ease the jams in advance of a new signalling system being installed, which will increase capacity on the Northern Line by 20%. The signalling should be in operation next year.
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TfL launches review of capital’s transport appraisal procedures
APPRAISAL
by Andrew Forster
TRANSPORT FOR London is to review how it appraises transport projects, including the treatment of time savings, wider economic benefits, impacts on health and the urban realm. TfL’s appraisal methodologies currently largely follow the DfT’s approach outlined in WebTAG. One important difference is that TfL weights the values of travel time to reflect average London earnings, whereas projects outside London are assessed using WebTAG’s lower values for average national earnings. Busi-
ness cases for projects in London have to be converted to the DfT values of time for Government spending reviews to ensure projects are compared on a like-for-like basis. Ryan Taylor, TfL’s business case functional lead, this week outlined a work programme to review the capital’s appraisal methods. He distinguished between changes ‘within the current framework’ – such as better models – and more farreaching changes ‘outside the current framework’. On the latter, Taylor said: “The DfT is open to methodological change if robust evidence is pre-
sented and it does look to other transport agencies, such as TfL, to guide the accepted methodology.” An informal working group has been established to progress work on possible reforms ‘outside the current framework’. Taylor said a seminar with invited academics would be run sometime within the next four months. Topics for review will include: • the treatment of journey times, including reliability, small time savings, the productivity of time, and “forces at work eroding [time saving] benefits” • economic benefits
• health/quality of life • urban realm/environment “If the DfT is reluctant to include any methodology that TfL would like to include, then it is possible to have a differing approach so long as business cases are converted to the DfT approved method for spending reviews,” said Taylor. Any reforms would take considerable time to implement, he added. The DfT last month announced a major programme to review its own appraisal methods, alongside launching a repackaged version of its WebTAG guidance (LTT 01 Nov).
A38 provides a fast route across the centre for all traffic, but it also severs the centre, creating a very noisy unattractive barrier to intra-centre movement,” says the city’s mobility action plan, prepared with consultant WSP. The plan also suggests exploring a city centre low emission zone; a workplace parking levy; and road charging. Bus priority corridors are identified and the plan proposes using Statutory Quality Partnerships to improve services. Rail services could be re-introduced on the Camp Hill and Sutton Park lines and Midland Metro extended at least to Centenary Square and the High Speed 2 station at Curzon Street.
APPRAISAL
should be incorporated into a project’s modelling and appraisal should be made on a scheme-byscheme basis. The case for not revising the analysis would be stronger if: • the WebTAG changes are not material to the project; • the change would require a significant increase in the cost and time for developing the project; • there is a low risk of legal challenge; and • the risk of damage to the reputation of the analysis, or the DfT’s wider project portfolio, is low.
Birmingham considers Revised appraisals ‘not downgrading city road always necessary’ – DfT
POLICY
BIRMINGHAM CITY Council is considering downgrading the A38 that runs across the western edge of the city centre, connecting with the Aston Expressway. The council says the city’s road network appears to have coped much better than feared with this summer’s six-week closure of the A38 Queensway Tunnels for repairs, and that the road’s future therefore needs to be “debated openly”. “There is no doubt that the
Birmingham mobility action plan is available at http://tinyurl.com/oy6r4kz
Council tests low-cost journey time monitoring
TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT
PORTSMOUTH CITY Council is staging the first UK trial of BlipTrack, a low-cost, Bluetoothand wifi-based vehicle sensor for collecting average speed and traffic congestion data. Via standard web browsing, the results can inform journey time predictions on variable message sign displays. Unit purchase and fixing onto existing roadside structures cost about £2,000 for each of six detectors covering 12 cross-city
routes, compared with £5,000£10,000 for each of the 12 or so ANPR cameras that would otherwise need to be installed, ITS (UK) members heard at their autumn conference. Developed by Danish firm Blip Systems, the system has been delivered by UK partner SmartCCTV. Smart CCTV managing director Nick Hewitson said: “BlipTrack catches upwards of 20% of vehicles, compared with 95% using ANPR. But this is statistically adequate for journey time information.”
THE DfT has published guidance to help project promoters decide if they need to revise scheme appraisals because of changes to the Department’s WebTAG transport appraisal guidance. The “proportional updates” guidance notes that projects can take many years to go from inception to delivery, and that multiple decision points requiring modelling and appraisal can occur along the way. Changes to the DfT’s WebTAG appraisal guidance during a project’s evolution can add cost and time to the preparation of project business cases. The DfT says decisions on whether changes to WebTAG
Transport analysis guidance – the proportionate update process is available at http://tinyurl.com/oy6r4kz
DfT finds more business travellers for HS2
HIGH-SPEED RAIL
THE DFT this week explained why the monetary benefits to business travellers of high-speed rail have shot up even though the value of time saved by business travellers has been cut by a third. Comparing the revised economic case for HS2 published last month with the version published last August reveals that the benefits of the project to business travellers have gone up from £12.6bn to £16.9bn for phase one (London-West Midlands) and from £34.3bn to £40.5bn for the full Y-network from London to
Manchester and Leeds (LTT 01 Nov). But the new economic case is based on a lower value of business travel time savings – £31.96 an hour compared with the previous value of £47.18. The DfT this week told LTT: “The proportion of business travellers expected to travel on HS2 is higher than predicted in the previous economic case. This is one of the primary drivers of the increase in benefits. Our analysis reflects the best available evidence on actual passenger trips and is based on hundreds of thousands of trips recorded over a number of years.”
News 7
In Brief
Cycle champion for the West Midlands A “high profile” cycling champion is to be appointed in the West Midlands conurbation to help boost cycle trips. The proposal is included in a cycling charter drafted by the seven Metropolitan districts and Centro. They want to boost the proportion of trips by bike from 1% to 5% by 2023 and increase public expenditure on cycling from about 25p per head of population to £10, in line with the recommendations of the All Party Parliamentary Cycle Group earlier this year.
Essex seeks fixed cost reimbursement Essex County Council plans to negotiate a new fixed cost concessionary fares reimbursement scheme with bus operators. Although the DfT’s guidance recommends reimbursement is paid according to the number of trips made over the year, Essex says a fixed cost scheme presents the greatest budget certainty for the council and operators. “In previous years, the bus operators have offered multi-year agreements to the county council,” said Richard Gravatt, Essex’s passenger transport strategy manager. “However, in the current economic climate, the county council will only be able to make an agreement covering the year 2014/15.” The council’s current fixed cost scheme costs £18.5m.
Green light for Leeds station works The DfT has given final approval to a £17m new southern entrance to Leeds station. The DfT will contribute £12.4m. Works should be completed by March 2015.
Leeds prepares for first P&R facility Leeds should have its first busbased park-and-ride scheme in operation next May. A preferred operator has been selected for the service, which will run from an 800-space facility on Eland Road, beside Leeds United’s football ground in the south of the city. Services will operate 7am to 7pm Mondays to Saturdays (except on matchdays) with three buses offering a 15-minute frequency service. Leeds and Metro have made a profit share agreement with the unnamed operator.
Bus tender guidance revised The DfT has published new best practice guidance on tendering bus contracts. The guidance updates a 2005 version and applies to England (outside London), Scotland and Wales. It was prepared by consultants Atkins and the TAS Partnership.
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Dutch method scores station to town centre walking routes
WALKING
by Andrew Forster
A NEW way to assess the quality of pedestrian routes between rail stations and town centres has been published by Dutch rail operator Abellio Group and environmental transport charity the Campaign for Better Transport. Abellio says the ‘Fixing the link’ method extends the concept of station travel plans beyond their typical boundaries of a station and its immediate environs. The method was developed for stations in the Netherlands but Abellio has now trialled it in three towns within its Greater Anglia franchise: Ipswich, Colchester and Ely. Pedestrian routes are evaluated according to four criteria: liveliness; human scale; legibility; and safety and comfort. Three charac-
teristics are scored for each: • Liveliness criteria include the presence of residences, offices, shops, leisure and educational facilities on the route. • The human-scale criteria includes scores based on the length of the route and the number of buildings per block. • Legibility includes the ease of orientation, the linearity of paths, and the clarity of maps and signage. • Safety and comfort covers factors such as the extent of pedestrian priority and the maintenance of the route, including provision of planting and public art. The three English towns scored poorly in the assessment. “In each of the three towns a large part of the pedestrian route to the town centre is on A roads and others that carry a high volume of traffic,” says the report.
“In Ipswich and to a lesser extent in Colchester much of the route to the town centre is lined by substantial, single use developments, often designed for access by car, which present a long, monotonous and unattractive face to the road.” At Ely, the pedestrian “emerges from the station into a car park, partly attached to the station and partly belonging to the neighbouring Tesco, which dominates the surrounding area”. The report recommends how the pedestrian routes could be improved including by using better signing; more pedestrian priority at junctions; and building higher density development. It also acknowledges that the methodology needs adjusting “to take proper account of the impact of traffic volumes on the pedestrian route and to recommend measures such as changes in road
to be introduced next year. Bus operations on Princes Street will remain unchanged for the time being, allowing the council to assess how the street functions with both buses and trams. Edinburgh’s director of services for communities Mark Turley said the council and bus operators would review Princes Street bus operations “with a view to reducing the numbers crossing the city centre”. The one-year trial will see George Street become a oneway street for general traffic, allowing footways to be widened and a two-way cycle route to be installed. The oneway direction of traffic has yet to be settled. Signal timings at some key city centre junctions are to be reviewed, with the aim of increasing pedestrian priority. A review of city centre parking provision will also be conducted “with a view to maintaining current levels, but creating more space for pedestrians and cyclists”. The council is also to commission a survey of origins and destinations of people in the city centre. “This would greatly help to inform a longer-term strategy on bus services in the city centre to be progressed with the main bus operators,” said Turley.
CABLE CAR
Edinburgh city centre bus shake-up ‘on ice’ TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT
COUNCILLORS IN Edinburgh have put plans to remove buses from one side of the city’s premier street, Princes Street, on ice following protests from traders and bus operators. Critics say Princes Street carries too many buses – consultant Gehl Architects described the street as a “big bus station” in a report for the council in 2010. With the city’s new tram line between the airport and the city centre is due to begin operating along Princes Street from next May, the council consulted earlier this year on introducing a one-way system for buses in the city centre, with east-west services operating along Princes Street and west-east services running on the parallel George Street to the north. But municipally-owned Lothian Buses opposed the plan, as did Princes Street traders who said the change would damage business. Traders on George Street, which has developed a reputation as a higher-class shopping street, also opposed the change, complaining that the additional buses on their street would damage its environment. Councillors have now agreed the details of a one-year city centre traffic management trial
design or the provision of alternative routes”. Abellio and CBT want the DfT and other franchise awarding bodies to emphasise the importance of good connections between stations and town centres in rail franchise specifications. They say local authorities should develop station master plans, including plans to improve station-town centre routes, as supplementary planning documents. The report suggests improvements could be funded from sources such as the Local Growth Fund; the Community Infrastructure Levy; the Government’s National Stations Improvement Programme; and the Local Sustainable Transport Fund. Fixing the link is available at http://tinyurl.com/oej55xy
Rethink cable car ‘flop’ Lib Dems tell Johnson
THE LIBERAL Democrats are urging Transport for London to rethink the operating strategy for the capital’s cable car because of disappointing passenger numbers. Weekly passengers on the Emirates Air Line in October were below 30,000, compared with over 40,000 in October last year. Transport commissioner Peter Hendy said last week that this year’s numbers were below forecast. Caroline Pidgeon, the leader of the Assembly’s Liberal Democrat group, said: “It is time the mayor and TfL admitted that they are failing to run it either as a successful tourist attraction or as a serious form of public transport.” She said it should be operated as a privately-run tourist attraction, “or as an integral form of public transport, where people with a travelcard or a relevant pass can use it for free and the Oyster fare
THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice is reviewing if Transport for London’s policy of allowing taxis but not private hire vehicles (PHVs) to use bus lanes amounts to illegal state aid.
HS2 Ltd probes Scots link
HIGH-SPEED RAIL
MINISTERS HAVE asked HS2 Ltd to study ways of increasing rail capacity between London and Scotland, and bring London–Edinburgh/Glasgow journey times below three hours. DfT director general for High Speed 2, David Prout, has set out the work programme in a letter to HS2 chief executive Alison Munro. “The work should consider high-speed options, upgrades to existing infrastructure, or a combination of the two, looking at both the East and West Coast rail corridors,” says Prout. HS2 and Network Rail will lead the project, which will also involve the DfT, Scottish Office and Transport Scotland. Councils along the routes will be consulted on a confidential basis. Scotland’s transport minister Keith Brown said: “I look forward to reviewing the report of the investigation with UK ministers and together deciding on the next steps.” HS2 Ltd will submit a draft report before next summer’s parliamentary recess.
In Brief
DfT asks Higgins to cut HS2 costs
Cable car: flop?
is no more than a bus fare”. TfL has rejected the criticism. Acting director of London rail, Jonathan Fox, said: “The Emirates Air Line is one of London’s real success stories. Since opening in June 2012 it has carried over three million people and as a vital new river crossing in east London it is already playing a key role in attracting new investment to the area.” The cable car connects Greenwich Peninsula on the south bank of the Thames with the Royal Docks on the north.
Bus lane case goes to Europe
TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT
News 9
The matter has been referred to Europe by the Court of Appeal, which is considering a legal challenge against TfL’s current policy brought by PHV operator Addison Lee. Transport commissioner Peter Hendy said a decision could take 18 months.
The Government has asked new HS2 Ltd chairman Sir David Higgins to explore how to cut the cost of HS2 below the current estimated £42.6bn (2011 prices). Higgins will present his findings to the transport secretary in March, before the second reading of the Hybrid Bill for the London to West Midlands line, which many MPs are expected to vote against.
Rail lobby group gets behind HS2 Pro-rail group Railfuture has declared its support for the Government’s high-speed rail plans. Many of the organisation’s members have been critical of the project but the group now says: “HS2 is the only game in town. If it is abandoned, we run the risk of losing this investment for decades. Therefore, we support the route of phase one with the exception of the HS1/HS2 link, which we believe needs to be reevaluated along the lines of the Euston Cross proposal [of Lords Berkeley and Bradshaw]. We support the proposals for phase two although we may want to make suggestions for a refinement of some station locations on the Leeds arm of the route.”
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LTT635 15 November - 28 November 2013
Is a hi-tech future the way ahead for personal travel planning?
10 Feature
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Consultant WSP believes that technology offers huge potential to transform personal travel planning by reducing costs, adding transparency and ensuring long-lasting travel behaviour change benefits. Andrew Forster speaks to Andy Winmill and Andy Porter about the firm’s plans
ave you ever had a visit from a personal travel planner? No? Well, if your doorbell rings next summer (and you live in England), there’s a reasonable chance you’ll be greeted by a cheery adviser, eager to offer you maps and advice about local cycle routes and bus services. And, if you’re really lucky, you may even receive a free seven-day bus ticket! Thanks to funding from the DfT’s Local Sustainable Transport Fund, perhaps as many as 200,000 homes will be targeted for personal travel planning (PTP) next year. For advocates of travel behaviour change, PTP travel advisers are the frontline troops in the battle to get people to use their cars a bit less, whether it be to improve health, cut congestion, or ‘save the planet’. With an onus on persuasion rather than compulsion, PTP isn’t hugely controversial. If there is a philosophical debate to be had, it’s about whether PTP is all a bit nanny state. Good luck to the personal travel planner who goes knocking on the door of communities and local government secretary Eric Pickles! But the most frequently raised question about PTP is whether it actually delivers longterm changes to travel behaviour. Despite having been in the transport planners’ toolkit for some years now, PTP still suffers from ‘feast or famine’ tendencies, heavily reliant as it is on Government funding. And so, although next year promises to be a bumper year, the future beyond that is uncertain, with the Local Sustainable Transport Fund only guaranteed for one more year (2015/16) and the rules for that funding are currently unclear. To find out more about the future of PTP, I’ve come to the Basingstoke offices of consultant WSP to talk to Andy Winmill, an associate who heads the firm’s ‘smarter choices’ team, and Andy Porter, WSP’s director – digital services – UK. They want to explain how putting PTP on a digital platform, as WSP intends to do from next year, could cut costs, add transparency, and boost its long-term effectiveness. This year has been a busy one for WSP’s PTP activities, with 37,000 households covered in three South East local authorities: Hampshire, Bracknell Forest and Wokingham. All the work has been LSTF-funded. Winmill explains that PTP advisers hit the streets from April to September to capitalise on the long hours of daylight and good weather. Next year Winmill says WSP has contracts for about 40,000 homes in the bag, and it’s pursuing a number of other opportunities. He says WSP will typically be competing against the likes of Sustrans, Steer Davies Gleave, JMP and AECOM for contracts. There are “subtleties and variations” to how PTP is delivered by different organisations, he adds. “We’ve got an approach that introduces a challenge aspect into the programme – that’s about really getting residents to engage in a trial travel behaviour period.” This is one of the crucial areas in which a digital platform will help. Winmill outlines the basic approach to PTP. “It’s about having a chat with a resident, finding out what their journey patterns are, where there are gaps in knowledge and understanding about what their sustainable transport options are, and going away and putting together a pack of information, it might be cycle maps, walking maps, bus timetables, and providing that information back to a resident, all of it tailored to that individual.” I’m amazed people need the help of an adviser to tell them where their local bus or cycle path goes. But Winmill
Andy Winmill (left) leads WSP’s ‘smarter choices’ work and Andy Porter (right) is director of digital services
believes many people wouldn’t have the motivation to find these things out without the visit of an adviser. “I guess a lot of people drive to work and always have done, so it’s never really occurred to them to find out and that’s really the process of PTP – enlightening people as to what the options are. “The great thing about PTP is it’s not just about providing people with reams and reams of generic information, we’re actually saying, ‘We’ll tell you which bus, from which stop, we’ll tell you how much the fare is, we’ll tell you what time it leaves, we’ll tell you what time it gets you to work’.” Similarly, WSP may prepare bespoke walking and cycling maps, showing local facilities and isochrones to indicate how long a trip would take by foot or bike.
Not everyone’s cup of tea
PTP doesn’t work equally well everywhere, says Winmill, and the choice of which residential areas to target comes down to careful analysis of population demographics and transport provision. “Our focus is principally on identifying clusters of successful professionals and educated suburban families who are typically quite car-dependent, but on a less habitual basis and who are therefore more open to considering changes in their travel behaviour.” Sometimes, however, clients may select a different sort of target population. WSP examines population demographics using Experian’s ‘MOSAIC Groups’ database. “We typically target fairly self-contained communities well-served by access to local sustainable transport options, “ he adds. “Suitable areas might also have benefitted from new or planned investment in sustainable transport infrastructure or improved public transport services.”
Winmill explains the different performance metrics for PTP. A contract specifying 2,000 homes is the number of homes to be visited, not the number of households who choose to participate. WSP’s travel advisers are instructed to visit an address up to three times to try and catch someone at home. The contact rate – the number of households in which the adviser manages to speak to the resident – is typically about 60%. “Of that 60% about 50% choose to participate in the programme. So from 2,000 households we might get somewhere in the order of 600 taking part.” The firm’s recent work in Basingstoke covered 5,300 homes, of which advisers made contact with someone at 2,696, and secured the participation of 1,370, with 373 of these taking up the challenge element. Typically, only one member of a household will be engaged in the PTP. “That fits a cost-effective delivery of the service,” says Winmill. People may decline to participate for a variety of reasons. “It might be Mr BMW driver who just says, ‘Look, naff off, I’m not interested.’ But there are other people who will open the door in their Lycra shorts and say, ‘Hey, I’m a keen cyclist, I cycle to work every day anyway.’” The challenge elements of WSP’s PTP programmes aims to get residents to commit to making a behaviour change. “The challenge aspect is simply we’ll expect the resident to actually take up the challenge of leaving the car at home at least once to experience travelling to work in a new way and then they’ll phone or email back their adviser, to give them a brief account of how it went. In exchange for that we’ll offer them some small token of thanks, such as a bike light or a pedometer. “You get some residents who probably do it once and decide actually I didn’t particularly like it,” admits Winmill. “But we’re getting a lot of feedback from some of our evaluations saying, ‘this is great, I can’t believe it, I didn’t
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TransportXtra.com/ltt realise the bus ran from A to B, I’m going to carry on doing it in the future.’” LSTF PTP projects are primarily focused on journeys to work but Winmill says that if a resident isn’t in employment or if the car really is their only way to make the work trip, an adviser can still help, for instance by offering advice about a shopping trip or suggesting a car-sharing scheme to cut commuting costs. So how are the achievements of PTP assessed? “When we make the first visit to a householder we’ll record what they do now as a baseline [typically how the resident usually travels to work],” Winmill explains. “We’ll then engage them in the process and then a couple of months later we’ll engage them in an after survey and ask them what they’re doing now, and we’ll look at what modal shift has been achieved in the process. “I’ll admit to a limitation with this kind of evaluation, and that is whether or not that change in travel behaviour, positive as it is, is being sustained longer-term beyond the duration of the project.” Again, Winmill believes a digital platform could help ensure a long-term benefit. PTP advisers are employed on fixed term contracts, and many are students grateful of summer work. There’s an art to being a good adviser, says Winmill. “Typically we look for people who’ve got good inter-personal skills, who are confident on the doorstep but not in a sort of double glazing salesman way. People who believe in sustainable transport and do it themselves tends to help, and getting people from the local areas is great.” WSP has about 40-50 advisers on its books and used eight to deliver PTP to the 5,300 households in Basingstoke this year. A first chat on the doorstep will typically last about ten minutes but Winmill is keen to trim this down. “At the end of the day, the less time an adviser needs to be on the doorstep to gather the information they need from somebody and still provide them with a good level of service, then the more cost-effective the PTP programme is going to be for our clients.” So how much does PTP cost? Winmill says it depends on the size of the scheme, with bigger schemes benefitting from economies of scale. “For the kind of projects we’re doing the cost per household is going to be between £18 and £25 per targeted household.” Costs can also vary depending on the PTP offer. He’s worked on projects where the clients have purchased monthly bus tickets that are then presented free of charge to residents who haven’t used a bus in years. Some bus operators give tickets away for free, others agree to sell them to the client at a discount.
A digital platform
Winmill believes the digital platform for PTP delivery can bring the cost down to about £15 per targeted household for large-scale interventions. Andy Porter has been leading the technical side of the digital development. Perhaps the most visible aspect of the change will be that advisers throw away their clipboards and pens and start collecting data from households with tablet devices. As well as eliminating the need for long periods of data entry in the office, the information collected on the tablets will be automatically captured in a database, and can be accessed instantly by WSP’s project managers and by the local authority client. The digital platform can produce a range of performance data (see image above) and Winmill believes some of it could provide a rich source of information for clients to use in other transport planning activities. WSP is also to offer residents the choice of receiving their timetables and maps in paper format or by email. Winmill says participants are increasingly requesting the information electronically so that they can access it via smartphones when they’re on the move. Could emailing the information also eliminate the need for advisers to pay a second visit to participating households? “That’s what we’re hoping to achieve,” says Porter. But Winmill is more cautious. “It’s an option, the issue is whether or not the second visit may still be worthwhile to engage with a resident to check they’re happy with what they’ve received [by email]. Hopefully the answer will be ‘yes’ but if the answer’s ‘No, I didn’t understand some-
Feature 11
The digital platform gives PTP project managers and clients instant access to a wide range of performance information about the programme
We’re looking to introduce a new challenge process in which people actually register the journeys they make [on an app] and receive some kind of reward-based incentive for each time they make that journey. Andy Winmill, WSP
thing,’ the adviser will still be on the doorstep with a tablet to say, ‘Ok, you’re not sure where that bus stop was, well look, let me bring up Google Streetview and I’ll just show you where it is.’ As things stand I think we may retain a second visit for that reason.” Winmill and Porter are particularly excited about how a digital platform could transform the challenge element of WSP’s PTP offer. “With this digital platform we’re creating, we’re looking to revamp the challenge element,” Winmill explains. “We’re looking at who we might be able to partner with to introduce a new challenge process in which people actually register the journeys that they make and receive some kind of reward-based incentive – points, like air miles I suppose – for each time they make that journey.” He points to the Strava website/app that records people’s running and bike trips using GPS tracking from smartphones and watches. “We can have a similar approach where for every mile of sustainable travel you do you earn points, you accrue those points and then perhaps exchange them for some other form of reward,” Winmill explains. Is this a proposal or a commitment? “It’s the intention that we do it,” says Winmill, adding that WSP wants to make it part of its PTP offer next year. “We’re in discussion with one reward-based app provider and we’re looking at other potential providers of these services to see how we might integrate them with this digital platform going forward.” Porter chips in. “We can already develop the apps, we have the capability to develop smartphone and tablet apps but other providers are already out there in the marketplace
and have got the solution already, but I think that needs to be tailored to the PTP market in particular. “Things such as Strava will only fit in with, say competitive cyclists, whereas we need something that might be more tailored around peoples’ needs, say, for how much money they’ve saved, how many calories they’ve burned etc etc, rather than competition.” Winmill explains how an app could be integrated with PTP: “What we’d like to do is register people through our process [on the doorstep] and then they’ll be emailed for example how to download the app or how to enter the information online.” Porter thinks there could be some revenue benefits for WSP in this. “The commercial opportunity is around the providers of the reward, if we’re going to provide lots and lots of new users of transport, whether it’s bus operators or cycle shops.” But Winmill sees the app primarily as a way of building legacy into PTP programmes. “When it’s all said and done, when all the PTP programmes have been delivered and it comes to March 2015 and the LSTF money runs out, what’s there at the end of it all and where does it go beyond that? If you’ve got an ability to engage with tens of thousands of households, get a proportion of them to begin to sign up to something that’s really more about a lifestyle change and do it effectively in perpetuity, you can say to your client at the end of the process, ‘Not only have we achieved these outcomes in terms of our performance metrics but, you know what, there’s 500 households in this area that are now users of this app’.” More generally, Winmill is hopeful that all the PTP being undertaken around the country will strengthen the evidence base for its effectiveness. And if the money runs out from Government, there’s still the opportunity to use PTP in new housing developments. “It might be very much in a developer’s interest to deliver a PTP scheme, £100,000 say, rather than spend £500,000 on a large complicated junction improvement. But for a developer to run that argument with a local highway authority they’re going to have to have a pretty clear evidence base that that’s what PTP is going to achieve.” Is the evidence available yet? “As things stand, it’s not there for me at the moment. PTP evaluations at the moment tend to be short-term evaluations – deliver it, wait a short while, gather the after survey information. But if we deliver the kind of things we’ve spoken about today we’ll actually be looking at peoples’ behaviour over a much longer period.”
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VIEWPOINT
LTT635 15 November - 28 November 2013
If we want safer roads for cycling we have to change how we measure road safety
Robert Davies Road Danger Reduction Forum
Last year the DfT ministers for cycling and road safety sparked outrage by suggesting that the Dutch had an inferior cycling safety record compared to the UK. Of course, in terms of cyclist deaths per 100,000 population – the conventional ‘road safety’ metric – it is worse. But in terms of deaths per journey, distance, or time travelled – it is far better. From a road danger reduction point of view, as opposed to the conventional road safety view, the people complaining were right. The official view inherently discriminates against having far more cycling, unless the death or other casualty rate goes down by a greater factor. This is not an arcane debate for professionals, but goes right to the heart of what people want in terms of safety and how people adapt to perceptions of danger. A better measure than the dominant one – as has been flagged up by cyclist groups, some enlightened councils, and even central government – is one taking some account of exposure: journeys, time, distance travelled (incidentally, much of this article applies to pedestrians as well). It takes resources to do counts, but they are necessary to give a meaningful indicator. Presenting the information this way also has the benefit of showing that cycling, particularly in London, is far less hazardous than is often made out. But we need to go further. Although subject to the usual problems of knowing exactly what happens in and
How about a ‘who kills/hurts whom’ indicator, where a mode is portrayed in terms of the chances of its users being in a collision where somebody else gets hurt or killed?
In Passing
At LTT’s conference last week on Local Enterprise Partnerships, Buckinghamshire LEP chair Alex Pratt ably demonstrated that some in the business community have got to grips with the ins and outs of transport policymaking, discussing, amongst other things, how the LEPs were planning to form sub-regional grouping to liaise with the Highways Agency. But if the email autoreply message we received from him this week is anything to go by, we fear all this work with the public sector starting to suffocate his entrepreneurial talents: “Nov 12th... This week I'll be mainly in meetings reminiscing about what it used to be like when I did things that had an immediate tangible impact.” LEPs stifling business? Tell that to Messrs Cable and Pickles. Could next September’s referendum on Scottish independence have a bearing on the Government’s high-speed rail plans? The DfT has just asked HS2 Ltd and Network Rail to examine ways of bringing the journey time between London and Glasgow/Edinburgh down below three hours.
before a collision, we have a good idea of the movements preceding cyclists being killed or seriously injured, certainly in London. As well as helping identify preventive measures, this determines who is legally responsible: we thus open the discussion out into who kills or hurts whom. So we could have useful indicators of chances of a cyclist being hurt or killed by a car driver legally responsible for the collision. If, by ‘cyclist safety’ we mean what cyclists can do to other road users, we get a useful indication that cyclists are much less likely than other road users to be involved in incidents where others get hurt or killed. How about a ‘Who Kills/Hurts Whom’ indicator, where a mode is portrayed in terms of the chances of its users being in a collision where somebody else gets hurt or killed? The debate really takes off with the idea that a given location is/is not safe because there are few cyclist KSIs. The road danger reduction movement has long struggled to show that there may be an absence of casualties because of low exposure – very often precisely because the location is seen as being hazardous. This is not just a subjective whim. Locations such as large gyratories, and places where cyclists may have to cross multiple lanes of fast-flowing motor traffic, are places with higher than average dangers from motor traffic. In that sense, professionals dismissing the fears of actual or potential cyclists are wrong. And we can measure objective danger factors: levels of Bikeability skills required to negotiate a junction; numbers of lanes to cross; speed of motor traffic; and so on. As Basil Fawlty might say, the fact of greater danger at some locations is often “bleedin’ obvious”, irrespective of or even inversely related to cyclist KSI numbers. And there are plenty of general indicators of road danger – for all road users – that can be usefully appended: the usual percentiles of speed, proportions of drivers unregistered, numbers of insurance claims made by motorists, etc. Where does this measuring actually lead us? Looking at locations with so-called “accident problems” has always been pretty hopeless as a guide to action for cyclist safety. Quite apart from the points above, there
are issues with low numbers and non-reporting. What do we actually want? This is a moral and political point. Road danger reduction differentiates between incidents such as a drunken cyclist falling off his bike and ones where the cyclist is struck by an illegally driving motorist. Neutralising that difference, which is the effect of the road safety profession totting up numbers of cyclist road traffic accidents is unscientific as well as immoral. The key point is to draw attention to the need to reduce danger at source, namely from the (inappropriate) use of motor vehicles. After all, a safety issue can be responded to by any kind of supposed “safety intervention”, irrespective of the chances of actually reducing danger. Naturally, in a car-dominated society, such talk leads to the accusatory “but it can be the cyclist’s fault”. But the fact that motorists can be responsible for hurting or killing themselves has not prevented construction of the ‘forgiving’ environment for them: airbags, crumple zones, seatbelts by vehicle engineers; felling roadside trees, crash barriers and anti-skid surfaces by highway engineers. All of this idiot-proofing is known to have exacerbated the idiocy, if not produced the idiots. Creating a forgiving environment for cyclists (and others) by reducing danger at source may well collude with carelessness by cyclists – but those who colluded with ruleand law-breaking by motorists can hardly argue against doing the same for rule-breaking that is less dangerous to others. Road danger reduction ultimately means a change of culture – whether expressed through law enforcement, vehicle or highway engineering or just plain human behaviour. At the very least, aggregated cyclist KSIs must now no longer be the dominant measure of cyclist safety, with any targets involving measures of exposure and objective danger factors.
HS2 Ltd will report back next summer, which would allow the Government to make a costly pledge just weeks before the independence vote. Assuming the ‘No’ campaign wins the referendum, the pledge will be very difficult for any of the pro-Union parties to back out of later on.
“Most people use cars, it’s 90-odd percent cars.” Violent scenes were only averted by Thurso’s diplomacy, the MP declaring: “Well, we’ll move rapidly on.”
Richard Wellings, deputy editorial director of free market think-tank the Institute of Economic Affairs, is about as straight-talking as they come. Appearing before the House of Commons treasury select committee last week to discuss high-speed rail, Wellings was quizzed about his wider rail views by Liberal Democrat MP John Thurso, whose north of Scotland constituency includes the Far North rail lines to Wick and Thurso. Wellings said the first priority was to eliminate subsidy from the rail system, which would inevitably lead to rural line closures. This incensed Mr Thurso who thundered, so London would be fine but Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross might as well join Norway! Wellings seemed to agree. “Rail’s irrelevant in those sorts of areas,” he retorted.
Robert Davies is chair of the Road Danger Reduction Forum (www.rdrf.org.uk) and author of Death on the Streets: cars and the mythology of road safety (1993). He has worked as transport planner in local government for 25 years.
Does any street in Britain offer more breathtaking views than those from Edinburgh’s Princes Street? Arguably not but the street itself is a big disappointment, with crowded footways, poor quality paving, a constant flow of buses, and increasingly tatty shops. With Edinburgh’s troubled tram due to start running along the street next spring, councillors are finally looking at ways to improve the street’s image, including extending the pavements on the shops side of the street and allowing cafes to open up on the ground floor of premises with outside seating. But locals aren’t altogether convinced that this is a wise idea, with the council’s summary of the consultation feedback noting: “For many respondents the climate issues were insurmountable. They felt that as they had no desire to sit outside in Scotland for most of the year, it was unlikely that anyone else would want to.”
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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
In January 2012 the DfT said there was no robust method of understanding how the economic benefits of high-speed rail would be split between different parts of the country. See letters from Alan Wenban-Smith and Roger Davies
WebTAG prevents HS2 tackling the North-South divide
Over the last few weeks HS2 has been taking heavy fire, and not just from NIMBYs. Reports suggest that Labour will want to look critically at regional economic benefits relative to costs (‘Labour could wreck HS2, warns PM’, LTT 1 Nov). But costs relative to benefits is exactly what economic appraisal is supposed to do, and a string of those over the last year, from official and semi-official sources, seem to show a healthy surplus. The fundamental problem seems to be the effect on public credibility of constant changes to the basic story line. The original case for HS2 rested on the value of time savings for business users (several £bn at so many £s a minute). Over the last few months it has shifted twice: • When it was pointed out that people often work on trains, the focus became providing additional capacity with minimum disruption; and • As other ways of increasing capacity emerged, the reason became tackling the North-South divide – ‘regional regeneration’. I believe that only the last of these reasons potentially provides a good enough case for spending around £50bn on high-speed rail. Unfortunately this is not a proposition on which the present appraisal system can be convincing, as the latest economic case report from HS2 Ltd itself makes disarmingly clear. When I reported to Greengauge 21 in 2009 on regional issues (Complementary measures to facilitate regional economic benefits from high-speed rail) I expressed concern that the dynamic economic processes involved depended on consistent action across a wide range of other policy areas; that there was no coherent system of governance capable of delivering this in the long-run; and the potential of such actions were not addressed by the official appraisal process. In other words, HS2 requires a broad approach for which we lack the machinery – and even if we had the machinery we wouldn’t be able to tell if it was worthwhile. If anything, the position now is worse now than it was then. Tackling the North-South divide is a cause capable of enlisting the long-term public support that a project such as high-speed rail requires if it is to happen. But public confidence that regional regeneration would result requires a radical re-think of both the project and its appraisal. Connections between elements of ‘the North’ should be the priority, to catalyse an economic agglomeration capable of balancing and complementing London and the South East and (incidentally providing the Birmingham-London HS2 link with the real purpose it currently lacks). Time savings were the reason for the 400km per hour design speed of HS2: but for regional regeneration 300kmph (as in most of the rest of Europe) would be adequate. This would cut costs and reduce environmental impact (especially if the link to London followed existing motorway and/or mainline railway corridors), and in line with regional regeneration logic served Manchester Airport rather than Heathrow. A radical redesign is thus needed, both to reflect the new rationale and to get better value for money. The Germans have tackled their East-West divide over the last 20 years with a coherent national sense of direction: so what is stopping the UK tackling its own North-South divide with equal energy, purpose and commitment? A great deal of political capital has been
invested in HS2 by all three major parties, so finessing any change will be extremely difficult. The conventional appraisal system is now an obstacle: it is clearly unable to deal convincingly with broader and longer-term issues of regional balance, yet it is used in the latest HS2 study, and the DfT has just re-issued a restructured (but basically unaltered) version of its web-based transport appraisal guidance, WebTAG. This appraisal system depends on a narrow econometrician’s view of how businesses work, and has become a vast rambling structure in which few outside its priesthood now have any faith. We need a more convincing story than WebTAG can offer, and (whisper who dares) this may perhaps take the form of an essay rather than a spreadsheet. PS. Since writing this letter, HS2 Ltd’s Strategic case for HS2 has appeared, and it is “an essay not a spreadsheet”. But, unfortunately, not a very good one: instead of a coherent argument, based on strategic economic purposes and buttressed by relevant evidence, it is an enormous heap of everything that sounds a bit positive. Alan Wenban-Smith Urban & Regional Policy Birmingham B13
We’ve enjoyed the comedy but it’s time to end this HS2 farce
A high spot on TV in my youth was the Whitehall Farce series starring Brian Rix and Elspeth Grey. Events gradually descended into farcical chaos, stories changing, misinformation abounding, vital facts withheld, identities altered and confusion everywhere. Today we have our own version, it’s called HS2. It’s been a green alternative to expanding Heathrow, long since forgotten. Not that it was going there anyway. Its green credentials are long gone, tiny numbers of passengers are expected to come from cars or planes. It was going to save business folk wasting time on trains, a concept also long gone with modern communications. So now it isn’t about speed anymore, it’s “a new north south railway” – so why persevere with a high-speed alignment that misses so many places and causes discontent? It is claimed it will bridge the north-south divide despite the DfT clearly stating on your front cover in January 2012 that it wasn’t designed to do so (‘HS2 isn’t about reducing CO2 or the North-South divide, says DfT’ LTT 19 Jan 12). They also said it wouldn’t cut carbon dioxide emissions. There’s a lot more to the north than Leeds and Manchester. If HS2 were built, folk from places such as Halifax now enjoying cross-platform connections at Leeds for London would have to trek to another station. The HS2 business case lists many places that would have fewer and slower services to London, the Lake District being but one. And as so-called high-speed trains won’t tilt, they’ll be slower than today’s Pendolino trains on existing tracks. Experience of high-speed rail in other countries shows central cities benefit as companies no longer have a need for regional offices. Talk about leaving a legacy. Network Rail’s figure for the amount of disruption necessary to upgrade existing lines as an alternative to HS2 looks as if it was plucked from the air. And anyway, just last week my first Sunday train on the
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Comment 13
LEPs – do the public know?
When ministers authorised the creation of Local Enterprise Partnerships across England three years ago, many in local government were sceptical that these alliances of businesses and councils would ever become serious players in local economic policy. After all, the partnerships had no funding to speak of, their role was ill-defined, and they would require busy private sector business people to devote their time to the sometimes stultifying process of public sector decision-making. The hurried formation of LEPs hardly boosted confidence, with many partnerships established with overlapping boundaries, which were, and remain, a recipe for confusion. But three years on and, with the help of a small cash injection to build their capacity, the LEPs are on the verge of taking over from local government decisions on how billions of pounds of public funds a year are spent, most notably the £2bn a year Single Local Growth Fund to be introduced from April 2015. The DfT is the biggest single departmental contributor to the fund, putting in just over £1bn. Last week’s LTT-sponsored conference on LEPs provided an opportunity to learn how preparations for the transfer of power are proceeding. Despite no ring-fencing within the fund, LEP and DfT representatives seemed confident that transport projects will do well, potentially receiving more money than the DfT puts in. But the day threw up a huge number of concerns about how the reforms could shape local transport policy. Where, for instance, do social, environmental and road safety objectives now sit, given the seemingly single-minded focus on the economy? Are business leaders likely to engage in the sometimes subtle debates about the economic benefits of public transport, walking and cycling schemes, or will they simply see the junction improvement or the road widening as their priority? And will they have the patience to wait for schemes to pass through sometimes lengthy DfT’s appraisal procedures? Sitting above all these issues were questions about the democratic legitimacy of the new set-up. Councils are members of the LEPs (and, in some cases, actually in the driving seat) but LEPs are not elected bodies and nor do they seem to have the capacity, time, inclination, or requirement to consult on their investment priorities. The strong suspicion is that the electorate remains oblivious to these reforms and will only become aware of what has happened when they quiz their council about why a particular policy is being pursued or why the council has no cash to implement a local safety scheme or cycleway. They may be very puzzled by the answer and tempted to ask a follow-up question, what are councils now for?
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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (continued)
14 Comment
West Coast Main Line was cancelled due to planned engineering works and I had to take a later one. A few months back the line was closed for around two weeks for necessary upgrading works. So as far as disruption caused by HS2 alternatives is concerned, it’s a case of no change there then. Then there is the question of cost. Nobody in their right minds can assert today that the already horrendous cost will not rise. As I predicted (Letters LTT 21 Dec 12) it comes down to the capacity argument. I’m not sure we have a problem with that here, and with evening peak West Coast trains leaving London half-empty it doesn’t seem to be the right area to be looking at. But it is right we have many desperately overcrowded trains; the problem is HS2 will not help the vast majority of them. It is all well and good politicians supporting the scheme in the interest of helping standing commuters but what they are actually saying is “and you are going to have to do it for another 20 to 30 years”. We have pressing needs on the railways that need a solution and need it now. HS2 is not that solution, it never will be, and should be scrapped immediately. At least the Whitehall farces usually turned out right in the end. Roger Davies Kendal LA9
Diesel vehicles: worsening air quality and no CO2 benefits
Duncan Laxen and Stephen Moorcroft refer to our failure to achieve reductions in nitrogen dioxide concentrations and relate this to the growth in the number of diesel cars combined with the lack of any improvement in diesel car emissions (Viewpoint LTT 18 Oct). The situation is quite different in Tokyo where both overall nitrogen oxide and nitrogen dioxide levels are falling steadily, despite a rise in the nitrogen dioxide/nitrogen oxide ratio. The reason for this differ-
ence is the absence of diesel cars in Japan. Indeed, only 18% of vehicle kilometres driven by light goods vehicles in Tokyo are by diesel vehicles. Laxen and Moorcroft say that the growth in diesel cars is a real plus for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. This is now being questioned. The late Lee Schipper, from Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, and Lew Fulton in a paper in the March 2013 issue of Energy Policy entitled ‘Dazzled by diesel?’ conclude that the European switch to diesel “has contributed little itself to the observed reduction is carbon dioxide emissions from new vehicles.” Indeed, Michel Cames and Eckard Helmers, writing in the open access journal Environmental Sciences Europe, 2013 25:15, go further and “conclude that global warming has been negatively affected” when a significant increase in supply chain carbon dioxide emissions together with black carbon emissions are taken into account. David Hutchinson Lewes, East Sussex BN7
Cycleways would be better beside motorways than HS2
I was interested by the article on a proposed cycleway parallel to HS2 (‘Consultants invited to design a cycleway to parallel HS2 route’ LTT 01 Nov). So the Government thinks a cycleway parallel to HS2 is a good idea and I think they are right. The publicity from such a scheme will excite a bit more interest in cycling and improve the green credentials of the Coalition. However, there are several “buts” to be considered. First, the National Cycle Network, and other cycle networks that it links, is a mature infrastructure and, like the original railway network, probably, needs an update. Secondly, HS2 is likely to take a generation to complete and, by that time, we need to have between 10% and 20% of journeys made by bicycle. Thirdly, HS2 is a railway and cycling is a road-based fully accessible mode. So a cycleway won’t want to go
LTT635 15 November - 28 November 2013
where HS2 goes. If they want a normal cycleway that links the north and south it should be routed parallel to existing motorways and should be started now. I believe that the disruption caused by HS2 should be ameliorated by the inclusion of a north/south water pipeline. I know there are objections to this but in 25 years’ time the water distribution system may have changed radically and it will be too late for a retro-fit.
Brian Dalton Purley Surrey CR8
TfL’s flawed claim of camera benefits overlook costs too
Transport for London’s claims for speed camera effectiveness are just the most recent example of long-term flawed and selective analysis (“TfL’s claim of speed camera casualty benefits ‘nonsensical’” LTT 1 Nov). TfL not only ignores Regression to the Mean (RTM), as Malcolm Heymer points out, but fails even to mention, let alone adust for, camera costs of £30,000 to £50,000 per annum compared to £1,000 per annum for vehicle activated signs. Nor indeed is there mention that cameras, being so much more expensive, tend to be used where accident numbers and subsequent RTM falls will be higher. Furthermore, given the police STATS19 accident causation data, it is not remotely possible that the speed reductions achieved from speed cameras could result in the accident reductions observed. Idris Francis Petersfield, Hampshire GU32
SEND letters to be considered for publication to: Local Transport Today, Apollo House, 359 Kennington Lane, London SE11 5QY Fax: 0845 270 7961 Email: ed.ltt@landor.co.uk (Letters may be edited)
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Comment 15
PHIL GOODWIN Comment
What knowledge lies behind cycle forecast?
The DfT’s prediction that cycle volumes will decline raises important questions about its modelling THE ASTUTE Times reporter Philip Pank wrote last week ‘Funding cuts fear as cycling is forecast to drop’. The funding cuts were not in any official statement, but the forecasts were as official as you can get – results from the Department for Transport’s National Travel Model (NTM), announced in Parliament by the transport minister, Robert Goodwill. The suggestion was that although cycle trips would rise a little between now and 2015, both trips and mileage travelled by bicycle would then decline for the following 15 years, So the ‘fear’ is that a broad brush strategic view that cycling will decline will set a tone for the discussion in which cycling is seen as a loser from the start. Now the actual figures for both trips and miles seem to be different (and less) from those found in the National Travel Survey and other sources, but the question is why is such a decline forecast when large, unprecedented increases in cycling have been such an important aspect of the transport landscape in recent years. One reason is that – as I am sure the DfT modellers would be second to agree – the NTM is unsuitable in many ways for forecasting cycling (not ‘fit for purpose’ in the strict sense of that phrase) because cycling is a small proportion of the total, the data are unreliable, the error bands are consequently wide, and the NTM mainly emphasises those aspects of influence over transport that have a national dimension, such as ‘the economy’, not the crucial influences over cycling which are manifestly local, as shown by the huge variation in experience between areas where cycling is increasing massively, and others where it is declining. The model is more comfortable with forecasts where roughly similar things are happening in different places. Another reason is that the model has never sought to capture the effects of motivations such as health, fitness, enjoyment or lifestyle. While there are hints of such impacts buried in some of the parameters, they remain just hints, and are almost invariably discounted. The main influences – say the model, and its custodians – are population, the economy, and costs. But even if that were true, the question then arises – so why does not the model forecast that cycling will increase at least in line with population, and the expectations of economic growth? Is cycling assumed to be such an inferior mode that growing numbers of people will shun it, and the richer they are the more they will shun it, in favour of car use? The other dimension is the convention that forecasts don’t include the effects of policies other than those firmly committed. This might be – I speculate – the reason why there are modest increases forecast up to 2015, because the current allocation of funds to support cycling are committed until then, but thereafter no commitment has been made, so the assumption is that they will cease, and the decline would be seen as the predicted effect of stopping the policies. That’s quite a subtle and double-edged argument, in principle, though in practice may not be important since I strongly suspect that the model will say (wrongly) that neither the funds already allocated, nor their cessa-
The DfT predicts cycling trips will decline from 2015 onwards
The DfT’s record, since 1989, on traffic forecasting at the national level, is appallingly bad. Long-term road traffic forecasts have consistently been overestimated... and rail has been mostly substantially overestimated. tion, would have very large effects. In any case, the Times story reports “The DfT said that its forecasts were based on rising incomes, falling motoring costs, higher congestion, an ageing and growing population and additional road infrastructure.” Can this really be true, this quote? Did a DfT spokesman really say that cycling would fall because increased road capacity will be provided – another policy which is a proposition for future governments, and cannot be more certain than the cessation of expenditure on cycling. I think we have to look at the bigger picture. The DfT’s record, since 1989, on traffic forecasting at the national level, is appallingly bad. The long-term road traffic forecasts have consistently been overestimated, both in times of economic growth and economic difficulty. Rail has been mostly substantially underestimated. Now the reason why it is appalling may not be all, or even mostly, the DfT’s own fault, as they stoutly repeat: they were given wrong assumptions about economic growth by the Treasury and wrong population forecasts by OPCS. That argument has some merit at the national, aggregate level. But it begs a bigger question. If the disaggregate forecasts for specific areas, area types, population segments,
policy contexts, age groups, occupations or other minorities are systematically wrong – and especially wrong for the crucial cases where trends are changing – there must be something structurally wrong with the relationships and linkages in the model, and the national totals must themselves be less reliable. That proposition, it seems to me, provides a really interesting starting point for a set of performance tests on the model which would genuinely increase understanding of how it operates – above all when the model itself still remains a closed, internal, DfT-only tool not available for any external analysts. Those tests – careful, transparent, fully engaged with stakeholders and without the need either to ‘prove’ or ‘disprove’ the model – would really help to move forward the unresolved paradox about forecasts, which rests at the heart of road infrastructure policy. The official view is that traffic, especially car use, will continue to grow indefinitely into the future, more or less in proportion to population, encouraged by economic growth and by reduction of motoring costs as engines get more efficient. The alternative view suggests that car use is at or close to some sort of saturation level and will remain stable, or even decline, in future. This view observes population and economic growth happening without traffic growth, influenced by changing land use patterns and changing attitudes and behaviour, starting with the young. I am inclined to this view. I could be wrong of course, but the point is that the debate is unresolved. Car use might increase, and cycling decrease, as the DfT predicts, or it might not. In terms of the balance of evidence – a growing international literature by excellent scholars – the DfT’s forecasts are, at least, seriously contested. Now the paradox is this. If the DfT forecasts are right, their programme of road infrastructure projects will appear to give good value for money, the way the calculus of appraisal is done, but the programme will fail to make things better. It may slow down the pace at which congestion increases, but congestion will increase, and therefore any impact of congestion on the economy will be a negative one, not a positive one. Transport will depress the economy. So if the forecasts are right, the road strategy is wrong. If however the forecasts are wrong, ie if there will not be much traffic growth, the projects will reduce congestion, but at a cost which is disproportionately huge compared with the modest benefits. That is a real strategic dilemma, and I think the NTM has much to contribute to it, potentially. But not without a much more carefully designed scrutiny. Phil Goodwin is professor of transport policy at the Centre for Transport and Society, University of West of England, Bristol, and emeritus professor at University College London. Email: philinelh@yahoo.com An archive of Phil Goodwin’s columns is available on TransportXtra.com/reports
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BUSINESS BRIEFING
16 News
Go Travel Solutions wins Milton Keynes Consultant Go Travel Solutions has won a three-year contract from Milton Keynes Council to develop a business travel network in the city. The ‘Smartgo Milton Keynes’ project will provide local employers and staff with services such as travel discounts and advice on public transport and active travel options. Go Travel Solutions already operates similar schemes in Leicester and Stevenage.
Carillion wins M6 smart motorway job Carillion has won a £70.5m contract to install smart motorway (previously called managed motorway) infrastructure on the M6 between junctions 10a and 13 in the Staffordshire. The scheme, which has an estimated total cost of £87.5m, will include mandatory variable speed limits and converting hard shoulders to additional traffic lanes. Construction should start early next year and be completed in spring 2015.
Five shortlisted for ScotRail franchise Five companies – Abellio, Arriva, FirstGroup, MTR and National Express – have pre-qualified to bid for the new ten-year ScotRail franchise, which will begin on 1 April 2015. The draft invitation to tender will be published on 19 November, with a spring 2014 closing date for submissions. The winning bidder will be announced next autumn. ScotRail is currently operated by FirstGroup. The new franchise – which includes a five-year break point – will not include the Caledonian sleeper service, which is being awarded as a separate 15year franchise. The invitation to tender for this was published last month, and the three bidders – Arriva, FirstGroup and Serco – have to respond by 12 December. The successful bidder will be notified next summer.
Amey and Mouchel win work in Oz UK infrastructure service firms Amey and Mouchel have secured highways maintenance work in Australia as part of joint ventures. A joint venture of Amey and Australian infrastructure companies Leighton Contractors and Boral Construction Materials has won a seven-year road asset management and maintenance contract from the New South Wales state’s Roads and Maritime Services agency and a similar five-year contract from the Department of Transport and Main Roads in Queensland. Amey has a 22% stake in the JV. DownerMouchel, a 50:50 joint venture, has won a seven-year maintenance contract for roads in Western Sydney.
First’s £80m fall in bus revenue outweighed by rail growth depots for £79.1m resulted in a £16.5m profit. First has initiated a threepronged programme to stimulate bus revenues and return margins to double-digit levels through: cost-cutting; selective fare cuts; and introducing new vehicles. average passenger volumes grew 0.7% in the six month period, the first increase for several years, with a 7.8% rise reported in the North region. UK Rail is a very mixed portfolio: First Capital Connect (FCC) and First Great Western (FGW) are premium payers, but First scotland (Fsr) and First transpennine (FtpE) receive subsidises, while First hull trains (Fht) is an open-access operator. total rail revenue increased 7.6% to £1.40bn (h1 2012, £1.30bn), and operating profits shot up 37.8% to £32.8m (h1 2012, £23.8m), improving margins from 1.8% to 2.4%. passenger revenues remains strong in all five operators, averaging 5.7% growth over the first six-months of the financial year, with hull trains turning in the best performance of 8.0%. Franchise
FirstGroup has reported mixed results for the half-year results to end of september with a deterioration of results in its uK Bus division but improved performance in rail. revenues as a whole were £3.30bn, up by 1.6% on the £3.25bn in the first half (h1) of 2012. Net debt was slashed 30.5% to £1,446.8m (h1 2012, £2081.8m). underlying (or unadjusted) EBitDa (earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortisation) was up 2.6% to £269m (h1 2012 £262m), and operating profit increased 10.1% to £109.9m (h1 2012 £99.8m). however, the adjusted results after depreciation, amortisation and interest, but before tax resulted in a group loss of £8.0m. a tax credit of £11.8m transformed this into a £3.8m profit. this is an improvement on h1 2012, where a £9.9m tax credit reduced a £20.6m loss to one of £10.7m. return on capital employed (roCE) after tax is currently 8%, though First wants to ratchet this
up to 10-12% in all but the rail sectors within the next four years. operating margins in the uK Bus (3.5%) and uK rail (2.4%) divisions compare unfavourably with First’s North america Greyhound (9.5%) and First transit (7.7%) operations, but considerably better than the 1.7% margin from its First student operations in North america. UK Bus accounts for around 15% of group turnover and ranks third in size behind uK rail (with over 40%), and First student (about 20%). uK Bus revenue fell 14.3% to £490.7m (h1 2012, £572.9m), and operating profit slumped 17.6% to £17.3m (h1 2012, £21.0m), bringing down margins from 3.7% to 3.5%. First attributes this fall to a number of factors: withdrawal from the London bus market; the olympic Games boost; higher fuel costs; and reduced central government grants to the bus industry. When these are factored out FirstGroup claims passenger revenues on a like-for-like basis actually increased by 1.7%. the sale of eight London bus
NatioNaL ExprEss Group has reported revenue growth of 5% in the third quarter, and 3% for the year to date. the group has five main business areas: uK rail, uK Bus, uK Coach, spain and North america. UK Coach turned in an “exceptional performance” for the seasonally important third quarter, with the august Bank holiday week described as being “the best on record for passenger volume and revenue”. revenue rose 9% in the quarter, and was up 5% for the year to date, largely passenger volume driven.
NEG partly attributes this to lower fares, as well as forming partnerships with airlines serving uK airports, and retailing tickets through 11,000 post office branches. UK Bus like-for-like commercial revenue (i.e. adjusted for mileage changes) was 3% higher in the third quarter, with passenger numbers 2% up, compared with the corresponding period of 2012. UK Rail figures are not given for the third quarter. c2c is the only remaining NEG rail franchise (now extended to september 2014). however, the
group has been shortlisted for the prestigious Berlin ringbahn contract, which it says is part of a pipeline of German rail opportunities worth over €500m of “targeted annual revenue”.
hEathroW airport’s owners have stepped up their campaign against Gatwick airport’s expansion plans, by publishing a report suggesting that cities can only support one hub airport. Gatwick’s owners have put forward plans for a second runway to the Government’s airports Commission and said that London doesn’t need a single mega-hub airport such as
heathrow or at one of the locations identified by London mayor Boris Johnson. But heathrow has now published the findings of a report commissioned from aviation consultant JLs Consulting into whether a split-hub model could work. JLs reviewed airport operations in New York, tokyo, paris and Moscow and concludes that none operate a two-hub model.
Baa chief executive Colin Matthews said: “this research shows that no world cities have successfully split demand across multiple hub airports. the uK can only benefit from improved long haul connections by building a bigger hub airport.” ● Analysis of global hub airports – why no city supports more than one hub is available at http://tinyurl.com/m68u4m8
By John W E Helm
passenger volumes grew 3.6%. premium payments made by FGW to the Government increased to £234.2m (h1 2012, £200.5m) and on FCC rose to £118.0m (h1 2012, £105.5m). But both franchises received revenue support from Government: FGW £153.4m (h1 2012, £132.3m) and FCC £39.3m (h1 2012, £26.0m). revenue support can be claimed from the Dft if the actual annual revenue falls below the agreed target revenue level of the original bid. if the shortfall is between 94% and 98%, the Dft makes up 50%; if less than 94%, the Dft contribution rises to 80%. Both FCC and FGW are in the latter category. subsidies to Fsr increased to £231.2m (h1 2012, £206.4m) and FtpE increased to £30.8m (h1 2012, £26.0m). the FCC franchise expires in 2014, and the other three follow in 2015. First has been shortlisted for: Essex thameside; thameslink, southern & Great Northern; scotrail; Caledonian sleeper; and the Luas light rail network in Dublin. it will tender for the East Coast Mainline next year.
Coach traffic boosts National Express Nextbike wins Bath bike hire contract Coach: profits boost
Heathrow attacks Gatwick airport’s plans
Bath aND North East somerset Council has awarded German bike hire firm Nextbike a contract to operate a public bike hire scheme in Bath. the contract will see Nextbike supply 100 bikes, based at ten docking stations. the scheme will be launched in the spring. Nextbike’s contract is for two years with a one-year performance-based extension. the Nextbike system will replace italian firm’s Bicincittá scheme, launched under the Civitas programme two years ago. Nextbike was founded in Leipzig in 2004 and operates in 80 cities in ten countries. it doesn’t operate any schemes in the uK but Glasgow City Council has selected it to operate a scheme in the city, with 150 bikes at 30 docking stations due to be launched next May (LTT 18 oct).
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Conferences & Courses 17
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18
Consultants & Researchers
TransportXtra.com/consultants
Action Streets consultancy supports clients to improve sustainable access to employment and education by bike, walking and public transport including LSTF projects. We enable clients to regenerate streets and urban centres through practical studies, street audits, workshops and training.
Please contact Richard Smith Tel: 07850099517 Email: richard.smith@actionstreets.co.uk
Air Quality Consultants Ltd provides independent expert advice on ambient air quality. Established in 1993, the Company has completed many assessments of road, rail, shipping and airport schemes. Its staff have presented expert evidence at numerous Public Inquiries. The Comapny plays a central role in the development of air quality management and assessment in the UK and abroad, and has developed guidance and many of the tools used for assessment.
Bristol contact: Prof. Duncan Laxen on 0117 974 1086 London contact: Stephen Moorcroft on 020 8673 4313 Email: aqc@aqconsultants.co.uk www.aqconsultants.co.uk
We are one of the UK’s leading civil engineering consultancies, with an enviable reputation for quality, reliability and value, providing Transport Planning & Traffic Engineering, Transport Assessments, Road Safety & Mobility Audits, Travel Plans, Highway & Civil Engineering Design, Traffic Management & Parking, Flood Risk Assessment & Drainage Strategy, Development, Masterplanning, Code for Sustainable Homes Assessment, and Expert Witness services.
Please contact: Swindon: Rob Bowley T: 01793 619965 Email: rbowley@coleeasdon.com Bristol: Doug Hickman T: 01454 800474 Email: dhickman@coleeasdon.com Warrington: Brett Farmery T: 01925 661707 Email: bfarmery@coleeasdon.com Find out more about us at www.coleeasdon.com
Curtins is a leading team of transport planners, engineers and consultants. We have developed design consultancy services nationally with a strong local presence across the UK. We provide innovative transport and highway solutions to both private and public sectors developers. Our proactive and commercial approach is focused upon responding to clients’ needs by providing a personable service with highly experienced specialists.
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Specialist consultancy providing highway, traffic and transportation advice to both the public and private sectors. Transportation Strategies, Transport Assessments, Sustainability Appraisals, Travel Plans, Policy Advice, Expert Witness Support.
Forester House, Doctor’s Lane, Henley-inArden, Warwickshire, B95 5AW Tel: 01564 793 598 Fax: 01564 793 983 inmail@dtatransportation.co.uk www.dtatransportation.co.uk
ITP is a dynamic consultancy specialising in sustainable transport planning and research. We offer expert advice and solutions in: Smarter Choices; Demand Management; Sustainable Transport Strategies; Public Transport; Transport and Climate Change; Market & Social Research; Consultation; Rural Transport; Accessibility Planning; Mobility for Disabled People; and Concessionary Travel.
Offices in Birmingham – Milton Keynes – Nottingham Please contact Nick Ayland Tel: 0115 988 6905 Email: ayland@itpworld.net www.itpworld.net
Specialists in all aspects of traffic signal design, analysis and training. As the producers of industry standard software such as LinSig, JCT is unrivalled in its ability to offer clients correct and appropriate solutions to their traffic problems. In particular, JCT is highly regarded for its expertise in signal roundabout and complex junction design having been involved in numerous projects and providing advice to Government at both National and Local level. JCT Consultancy Ltd, LinSig House,
Deepdale Enterprise Park, Nettleham, Lincoln LN2 2LL Tel: 01522 751010 Fax: 01522 751188 Email: anthony.gerundini@jctconsultancy.co.uk www.jctconsultancy.co.uk
Introducing our SmarterTravel Service. Our Smarter Travel Team provides the full range of sustainable transport services: school, work and individualised travel plans, travel surveys, business travel networks, promotion & marketing and much more. All schemes are managed by our in house specialists, with additional resource taken from our pool of over 450 registered sustainable transport professionals. This flexible consultancy model provides excellent value for our clients at a cost of up to 50% less than other traditional consultancies.
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The leading independent Transportation Consultancy. Travel Plans, Accessibility Studies, Highway and Infrastructure Design, Transport Assessments, Noise and Vibration, Air Quality, Public Transport Planning, Streetscape Solutions, Road Safety, Pedestrian and Cycle Networks, GIS Modelling and Evaluation, Regeneration Studies, SuDS and Integrated Transport Plans.
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A central London transport planning consultancy specialising in global sports stadia and major events, central London development planning and international stations and transport interchange. We enjoy what we do, and deliver outstanding value and technically excellent advice by employing the best consultants and empowering them to solve our clients’ most complex challenges.
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Mott MacDonald is a leading consultancy shaping transport solutions around the world. We provide a comprehensive range of services combined with a real understanding of local conditions to find the right solution in all stages of the planning and implementation process for all modes of urban and inter-urban transport.
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Stratageeb Ltd assists businesses develop strategic visions and positioning, thus, allowing for stronger, more focussed growth. Based on the experience of its MD Giles Bailey, who brings 20+ years of knowledge in strategy, innovation and marketing at organisations including TfL, its activities include work with digital starts-ups, business mentoring, university lecturing, public speaking and proposal refinement.
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Specialists in innovative ways of developing and promoting sustainable transport, covering every step from strategies to implementation. We can offer advice and solutions on a range of sustainable transport options: cycling & walking projects, cyclist training, professional training for cycling & walking practitioners, public consultation, travel plans, promotion & marketing, active leisure and much more.
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The Transportation Consultancy (ttc) is a dynamic and innovative transportation consultancy that specialises in transport planning, traffic engineering, sustainable transport and transport economics. Our people have over 100 years of combined technical knowledge and can offer you expert advice covering the whole transportation sector, helping you to make sound decisions in today’s complex environment. Our advice is underpinned by innovation, technical excellence and expert opinion, enabling our clients to make sound decisions in what is often a complex and challenging environment. “ttc” has a set of values that guides us in our everyday business and continues to drive our ambition to provide unrivalled advice that helps deliver the best transportation solutions to our clients.
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TTR are sustainable transport experts who provide high quality transport consultancy and research services. TTR also helps local authorities and partner organisations to gain access to European and national funding. What we do: • Freight Transport Policy • Health, Environment & Climate Change • European Projects and Bids • Smarter Choices • Travel Information Services • Transport Demand Management • Market & Social Research • Transport Accessibility & Equality.
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URS provides transport consultancy and planning solutions across the investment and project lifecycle for local and central government, infrastructure operators and private sector clients. Core services include business case, demand and revenue forecasting, transport assessments, sustainability, technology, road safety engineering and travel planning.
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Waterman is a leading engineering and environmental consultancy with specialist skills in transport planning, traffic engineering and infrastructure design consultancy. We work in partnership with both public and private sector clients to deliver sustainable and affordable solutions on projects throughout the UK.
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Transport Organisations
The CIVINET UK & Ireland Network is the sustainable transport network for local authorities. Members can access European and national funding information, comprehensive sustainable transport expertise and networking events. Private organisations are welcome as associate members.
Tel: 0117 907 6520 Email: civinet-uk-ireland@civitas.eu www.civitas.eu/civinet-uk-ireland
ITS United Kingdom is the society for all who work in the Intelligent Transport Systems sector in the UK. ITS technology delivers transport benefits in terms of reducing congestion, lessening the environmental impact of transport, and real time and accurate information to travellers and managers. ITS (UK) has 170 corporate members, ranging from UK Government departments to systems suppliers, consultants, and academic institutions. ITS (UK) is the voice of the ITS community
Tel: 020 7709 3003 Email: mailbox@its-uk.org.uk www.its-uk.org.uk
The Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership is an action and advisory group established in 2003 to take a lead in accelerating the shift to low carbon vehicles and fuels in the UK and to help ensure that UK business can benefit from that shift. The LowCVP now has over 300 member organisations from sectors including: energy; automotive; government; academia; environment campaigns and road user groups.
Tel: 020 3178 7859 Email: secretariat@lowcvp.org.uk www.lowcvp.org.uk
20’s Plenty For Us is the national charity that supports local 20’s Plenty campaigns across the country. Implementing lower speeds that work requires far more than highway engineering. 20’s Plenty For Us can offer practical advice on how to work with communities to maximise driver compliance and community ownership of lower speeds.
Tel: 07973 639781 Email: info@20splentyforus.org.uk www.20splentyforus.org.uk
Carplus is the national accreditation body for car clubs in the UK and co-ordinates annual data collection and research for this sector. We provide information, advice and consultancy to regional government, local authorities, transport professionals and community groups on car clubs and ride-sharing. Carplus is a membership organization and registered charity with offices in Leeds and Edinburgh.
Tel: 0113 234 9299 Email: info@carplus.org.uk Twitter: @CarplusTrust www.carplus.org.uk
The Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (UK) is the leading professional body for individuals and organisations involved directly and indirectly in transport, logistics and supply chain management. As a member of CILT you will receive a wide range of products and services to support you throughout your career. These benefits represent an outstanding return on your initial investment and will help you to make a noticeable impact at all levels within your organisation.
Tel: 01536 740 100 Fax: 01536 740 101 Email: enquiry@ciltuk.org.uk www.ciltuk.org.uk
PTRC Education & Research Services Co Ltd is a company within CILT (UK). PTRC is the leading international organisation specialising in the training of transport, highways and planning professionals.
Tel: 020 7481 970 Emai: info@ptrc-training.co.uk www.ptrc-training.co.uk
Your company here?
Please contact Daniel on: 0845 270 7861 or email: daniel@landor.co.uk
The Transport Planning Society facilitates, develops and promotes best practice in transport planning and provides a focus for dialogue and debate between all those engaged in it, whatever their background or other professional affiliation. TPS works closely with its four partners ICE, CILT (UK), IHT and RTPI to further the profession and in the development of transport planning qualifications.We run a programme of events across the country. Tel: +44 (0)20 7665 2238 Email: info@tps.org.uk www.tps.org.uk
The Transport Statistics Users Group brings together users and producers of transport statistics to develop understanding, identify problems in provision and suggest solutions. The TSUG organises a series of regular seminars and publication of newsletters and a Yearbook, all of which are free to members.
For more information, visit: www.tsug.org.uk, email membership@tsug.org.uk or phone 0203 054 0874
Specialists
View their full CVs at TransportXtra.com/consultants FINE Ann
Fine Reports Professional policy and strategy development including clear and concise report writing. Experience in local transport plans, Highway asset management plans, Parking and Enforcement plans, Road safety plans, Network Management reports and plans, Freight Transport Strategies, School Travel Plans, data management, report writing and bidding.
Tel: 07815 526068 Email: ann@finereports.co.uk www.finereports.co.uk
HURDLE David. DipTP, MA, MRTPI, FCILT
Transport Planning Consultant Travel Plans, Transport Policies/Strategies and Active Travel Audits.
Broomfield, 20 Holt Road, Sheringham NR26 8NB Tel/Fax: 01263 822300 Mobile: 07808 533165 Email: d.hurdle@btinternet.com www.davidhurdle.co.uk
STAVELEY Peter. MSc CMILT
Public Transport Consultancy Railway and bus operational planning, public transport strategy, railway timetabling, capacity studies, software development, data manipulation.
247 Davidson Road, Croydon, CR0 6DQ Tel: 07973 168742 Email: Peter@PeterStaveley.co.uk www.PeterStaveley.co.uk
LTT635_p08,17-23_LTT635_p08_p17-23 14/11/2013 16:15 Page 19
TransportXtra.com/ltt
The LTT Directory 19
To place an advertisement call the sales team on 0845 270 7861 or email ads.ltt@landor.co.uk
The next issue of LTT will be published: Friday 29 November Advertising booking deadline: Tuesday 26 November
To advertise please contact Daniel on: 0845 270 7861 or email: daniel@landor.co.uk
LTT635_p08,17-23_LTT635_p08_p17-23 14/11/2013 16:15 Page 20
20 The LTT Directory
LTT635 15 November - 28 November 2013
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TransportXtra.com/ltt
The LTT Directory 21
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LTT635_p08,17-23_LTT635_p08_p17-23 14/11/2013 16:16 Page 23
www.Jobs-in-Transport.com
Recruitment 23
The best jobs for transport specialists starts here
Head of Transportation & Highways £92,000 We need you to evolve our recent success stories, develop new ones, build practices and prioritise infrastructure that will continue Thurrock’s programme of regeneration. With an impressive track record in a similar role, you’re ready for a diverse remit: everything from overseeing strategic transport to public rights of way. APPLY NOW: http://tinyurl.com/p7axe75
Closes: 18th November
Principal Transport Policy Officer £37,517 - £44,136 North Hertfordshire District Council is pleased to be able to offer an opportunity for a Transport Policy Officer to work with the Strategic Planning & Projects Team in progressing the Council’s strategic priorities of delivering cost-effective services, working with local communities and protecting our environment for our communities. Closes: 18th November
APPLY NOW: http://tinyurl.com/m2p89mc
Transport Planner £17,980 - £29,528 Working in the sustainable travel team, you will be responsible for delivering key, innovative LSTF projects including Business Travel Planning in Dorchester and Visitor Travel Planning and pedestrian way finding in Weymouth. Closes: 20th November
APPLY NOW: http://tinyurl.com/lknvma5
Strategic Transport Planner £34,842 – £43,266 You will have the responsibility for client-managing some of our ambitious projects, representing the City Council on transport projects across the Transport for South Hampshire area as well as the Local Economic Partnership, and also lead on the transport aspects of the City Centre Masterplan. APPLY NOW: http://tinyurl.com/pjcy5y5
Closes: 22nd November
Regional General Manager Southern Home Counties The Regional General Manager will have accountability for engineering and operational delivery across a number of depots which will run a sizeable fleet and employ 500 or so staff in a challenging commercial environment. Closes: 28th November
APPLY NOW: http://tinyurl.com/np5yoly
Programme Manager £38,393 - £41,954 To provide overall programme co-ordination and management, financial control, liaison with politicians and interest groups, management of risk and liaison with the Department for Transport. The Programme Manager would report to the Director of Passenger Services (as Programme SRO) and would contribute to developing options for development of new delivery arrangement for ‘behaviour change’ activities. Closes: 5th December
APPLY NOW: http://tinyurl.com/ltxqmgz
Programme Co-ordinator £25,660 – £32,153 To monitor and report programme finances, provide forecasts of expenditure, liaison with component projects and within Metro, including Finance and LTP team in respect of quarterly payments to partners. The programme co-ordinator would also act as Project Manager for the monitoring and evaluation activities. Closes: 5th December
APPLY NOW: http://tinyurl.com/m3va45p
Graduate to Senior Transport Planners – London Competitive salary Motion is a specialist Transport Planning and Infrastructure Design Consultancy with offices in London and Guildford. Due to continuing growth, Motion is looking to recruit Transport Planners with a good development planning background for our London office. Closes: 29th November
APPLY NOW: http://tinyurl.com/pg3kx4w
To advertise please contact Daniel on: 0845 270 7861 or email: daniel@landor.co.uk
LTT635 back page_LTT635_p32 14/11/2013 20:38 Page 40
Editorial
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Advertising
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Next issue
Published 29 November
LTT635 15 November - 28 November 2013
Public must support Combined Authority plan, North East told
TransportXtra.com/ltt People
News
GOVERNANCE
THE GOVERNMENT has asked local authorities in the North East of England to provide “clear and compelling evidence” that their plan to set up a combined authority (CA) overseeing transport and economic policies has public support. The Department for Communities and Local Government consultation on the authorities’ proposal notes that in 2004 the North East voted against plans for an elected North East regional assembly in a referendum. “The Government believes it is right that there is clear and compelling evidence that the past opposition of electors within the local area to governance changes in that area does not continue to any new proposal for a combined authority,” says the DCLG. The North East Combined Authority would cover the five Tyne and Wear districts – Newcastle, Gateshead, North Tyneside, South Tyneside and Sunderland – plus neighbouring Durham and Northumberland. It would take on the functions of Tyne and Wear
Integrated Transport Authority (TWITA) and transport functions of Durham and Northumberland. The councils want the CA up and running next April but the plans first have to be approved by ministers and Parliament then has to approve a Parliamentary Order. The CA would have eight members – one from each of the councils and one from the North East Local Enterprise Partnership. A joint transport committee would operate below the CA, discharging transport functions. The future of Nexus, the Passenger Transport Executive, is unclear. It would continue for a transitional phase as an executive body of the CA but only covering the five metropolitan districts. During this time Durham and Northumberland would continue to undertake their functions for public transport information, transport infrastructure delivery, tendered bus services and concessionary fares. “Following the transitional phase, the combined authority would establish consistent delivery arrangements to operate across the
geography of the combined authority as a whole,” the DCLG explains. The CA will have the power to raise a levy on member councils to cover the cost of transport functions. The levy will be subject to council tax referendums if Parliament enacts the Local Audit and Accountability Bill. CA members will decide how to apportion the levy between member authorities. The DCLG notes that apportioning the levy on the basis of population would be inappropriate because Northumberland and Durham have different transport needs from the Tyne and Wear conurbation and TWITA has historic debt that would be inappropriate for the county councils to shoulder. The first full year of a levy covering all seven councils will be 2015/16. Consultation ends on 2 January.
The authority will have ten members – eight from the five districts (the leaders plus three reflecting the political balance of the authorities); one from York Council; and one from the Leeds City Region Local Enterprise Partnership. The West Yorkshire Integrated Transport Authority and the Passenger Transport Executive will both be dissolved. A joint committee overseeing
transport would operate below the CA. It could carry out functions that councils may choose to delegate to the combined authority, such as urban traffic control or road network management. Consultation ends on 2 January.
Proposal to establish a combined authority for the area of Durham, Northumberland and Tyne and Wear is available at http://tinyurl.com/kb43wzc
Consultation on West Yorkshire CA plan
GOVERNANCE
THE GOVERNMENT is consulting on West Yorkshire’s plan to set up a combined authority (CA) to oversee transport and economic development from next April. The CA would cover the five Metropolitan districts of Leeds, Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees and Wakefield. The City of York Council would be a non-constituent council member.
Proposal to establish a combined authority for the area is available at http://tinyurl.com/m7mvrqt
Poulton launches transport consultancy
Marshall Poulton (pictured) has
left the City of Edinburgh Council, where he was head of transport, and set up his own consultancy, LBK Transport Consultants. One of his current contracts is helping to develop a transport strategy for the Swindon and Wiltshire Local Enterprise Partnership. Poulton joined Edinburgh in 2008 from Transport for London where he was head of technology and systems.
Veitch leads ACT Travelwise Alex Veitch has been elected chair of travel behaviour change organisation ACT Travelwise, after a period serving as interim chair following Colin Black’s decision to stand down (LTT 28 Jun). Veitch is European affairs and sustainability manager at the rail industry’s Rail Delivery Group and EU representative and sustainability manager at the Association of Train Operating Companies.
Temple appoints technical directors Environmental and planning consultancy Temple has appointed Mark Skelton and Martin Gibson as technical directors. Skelton joins from Capital Symonds where he led a 120-person multi-disciplinary planning, environment, design and transport planning team. Gibson is a former member of the now defunct English Regional Cycling Development Team.
New MDs at FirstGroup’s bus businesses Fiona Kerr has been appointed managing director of First Glasgow, replacing Ronnie Park who went on indefinite leave in the summer (LTT 9 Aug). Kerr, 35, was previously regional finance director of FirstGroup’s Scottish bus operations, and is a chartered accountant. FirstGroup has also made managing director appointments for its three restructured South East and Midlands businesses. Adrian Jones will lead the Essex business, David Squire is interim managing director of the Eastern Counties business based in Norwich; and Nigel Eggleton will lead the Midlands business, based in Leicester.
Jamie Burles has been appointed managing director of Abellio’s Greater Anglia franchise, succeeding Ruud Haket who has joined Keolis as chief operating officer (LTT 01 Nov). Burles was a bid director for Abellio UK, leading the company’s bid for the Thameslink franchise. If you would like to be included in this column please call 0845 270 7875 or email ed.ltt@landor.co.uk
LTT635_Mainstreaming_Wraparound_LTT635 12/11/2013 15:46 Page 3
4 DECEMBER 2013 - DAY 2: HOW SMARTER TRAVEL DELIVERS - LESSONS LEARNED 08.45
Registration: Refreshments served in the exhibition area
09.00
Optional pre-conference 30 minute ‘International Breakfast Briefing’ in the Great Hall New York's sustainable transport policy and practice
to 09.30
Jon Orcutt, Director of Policy, New York Department of Transport & Kate Fillin-Yeh - Director of the NYC Bike Share scheme Smarter Choices in Singapore Dr Evan Gwee, Director, Research and Publications Division, Land Transport Authority Academy, Singapore
09.50
Sustainable transport in Manchester Councillor Andrew Fender, Chair of the Transport for Greater Manchester Committee (TfGMC)
10.00
The views of LEPs on Sustainable Transport Mike Blackburn, Chair of the Greater Manchester Local Enterprise Partnership & BT's regional director for the North West
10.10
Mainstreaming the Local Sustainable Transport Fund Local Transport Minister Baroness Kramer
10.20
Interview with the Minister, Chair of GM LEP and Chair of TfGMC Interviewer: Lynn Sloman Director of Transport for Quality of Life
11.00
Break: Refreshments served in the exhibition area
11.30
Streamed sessions:
Delegates choose 1 of 4
The Great Hall
Lord Mayor's Parlour
Conference Hall
Committee Room
Marketing and Communications
Engagement Partnership working
Mainstreaming embedding smarter travel into general practice
Integration - New technology, smartcards, buses, trains & interchange
Sponsored by Diva
Sponsored by TfGM
The Key Ingredients of a Successful Behaviour Change Campaign Amy Boyle, DIVA Creative
Delivering Success Through Partnership Working Helen Ramsden, TfGM
The Greener Journeys Behaviour Change Lab: getting motorists to try the bus Lynn Sloman and David Hall, Behaviour Change Lab A campaign to increase awareness of shared transport and create legacy Ali Clabburn, Liftshare & Thomas Evans, Gloucestershire CC
Lessons from the Award Winning Lowestoft Local Links Steff Jones, Suffolk Council and Jon Parker, ITP Employers group - business enagement Ann O'Driscoll, North Bristol Suscom
12.45
Lunch: Served in the exhibition area
13.45
Streamed sessions: Delegates choose 1 of 4
Sponsored by Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) How big can we go? Gordon Baker, JMP The devil is in the delivery Jon Foley, Steer Davies Gleave Maximising value- tapping into existing funding to maximise LSTF project funds Tim Anderson, Energy Savings Trust
Sponsored by ATKINS Effective partnerships for passenger transport Andy Summers, Hertfordshire CC How technology & gamification can be used to encourage travel behavioural change. A case study from Leeds METRO James Datson, ATKINS; Ginny Leonard, METRO, Ronan Carter, Stravel & PleaseCycle; Jon MJ, Cambridge University Demolishing Information Silos for the Benefit of Customers Pete Johnson, TfGM
The Great Hall
Lord Mayor's Parlour
Conference Hall
Committee Room
Mainstreaming Embedding smarter travel into general practice
Monitoring and Evaluation
Active Travel - Walking and Cycling initiatives Workshop
Integration - New technology, smartcards, buses, trains and interchange
Sponsored by Sustrans
Sponsored by ATKINS
Mainstreaming Cycling for All Nick Vaughan, TfGM & Eleanor Roaf, Sustrans Regional Director, North West
Real Time Travel Information Delivering the benefits Daniel Hobbs, AECOM
Developing a new behaviour change framework to encourage cycling Sam Robinson, General Manager, Challenge for Change
Connecting the Dales LSTF Randall Ghent, DITA
Best Practice in Monitoring Andy Cope, Sustrans
Sponsored by ATKINS Local Growth Deals & Smarter Travel Jonathan Foster-Clark, Atkins
Cost effective monitoring of behaviour change interventions Tony Duckenfield, Steer Davies Gleave
LSTF and Young Adults: The real potential for sustained, life - long travel behaviour change Damian Price, Mott MacDonald & Rachel Evans, Centro How do we ensure a local LSTF legacy? Adrian Webb & Lee Parker, Southampton CC & Parose Projects
14.45
Break: Refreshments served in the exhibition area
15.15
Streamed sessions: Delegates choose 1 of 4
Sustaining access and connectivity in remote areas: some issues for smart communications Coen Salemink, University Groningen
The Great Hall
Lord Mayor's Parlour
Conference Hall
Committee Room
Marketing and Communications
Active Travel - Walking and Cycling initiatives Workshop
Engagement partnership working
Monitoring and Evaluation
Sponsored by Sustrans
Sponsored by TfGM
Integrating hard and soft measures in access to education & work Tony Russell, Transport Engineering Manager, Sustrans & Zsolt Schuller, Strategic Sustainable Travel Officer, Devon County Council
Cross Boundary Partnership Working The Trials and Tribulations, a practical guide Daniel Caffrey, St.Helens Council
Workshop on Monitoring and Evaluation Betty Leow & Angela Trevithick, DfT
Sponsored by ACT Travelwise Market Segmentation John Screeton, DfT A Blueprint for an Effective Sustainable Travel Website Steve Dupree, Diva Creative Engaged Employers and intergrated funding Rachel Evans and Thomas Evans, Gloucetershire County County Council 16.15
Event Close
Sponsored by the Department for Transport
Delivering Smarter Travel Choices through Social Landlords Lucy Low, Cheshire West
Published programme subject to change. See www.mainstreamsmart.co.uk for latest updates.
www.mainstreamsmart.co.uk
LTT635_Mainstreaming_Wraparound_LTT635 12/11/2013 15:45 Page 4
Editorial
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Next issue
Published 29 November
TransportXtra.com/ltt
LTT635 15 November - 28 November 2013
LOCAL
SUSTAINABLE
TRANSPORT
Hosted by:
Supported by:
FUND
The 2-Day Mainstreaming Smarter Travel event includes 'round-table’ discussion forums, workshops, panel discussions, case study and key-note presentations taking place over the two days. Delegates will have the opportunity to learn lessons from the early projects already underway, for those planned for implementation in 2014/15.
WHO SHOULD ATTEND? Local Sustainable Transport Fund National Conference
3 & 4 December 2013 | Manchester Town Hall Supported by the Department for Transport and hosted by Transport for Greater Manchester, this conference is the second national meeting of all the LSTF projects. The programme features a mix of networking discussion, panel debate, keynote presentation and streamed sessions providing a knowledge sharing platform for delegates. It is an opportunity for delegates from a number of different sectors to network with each other, share good practice, find opportunities for cooperation, and to discuss the future of smarter travel. ■ Listen to presentations from experts on the future of smarter travel ■ Network with practitioners tasked with delivering LSTF projects throughout the UK ■ Learn from good practice being delivered as part of the LSTF ■ Join networking groups to discuss cooperation opportunities
With an expected 450 delegates, Mainstreaming Smarter Travel is the meeting place for sustainable transport experts from around the UK. If you are involved in sustainable transport provision then this is the event to attend to input into the future of smarter travel and find cooperation opportunities. Delegates and speakers include: ■ ■ ■ ■
■ ■ ■ ■ ■
transport planners travel planners sustainable transport officers facilities and transport managers from large employers LEP representatives public health officials academia transport operators consultants ...from both the non-profit and private sector.
DELEGATE RATES Mainstreaming Smarter Travel is endorsed by:
First private sector delegate
£245 + VAT
Each additional private sector delegate
£195 + VAT
Public Sector delegates
£95 + VAT
Add-on Mapping & Information for Smarter Travel Morning Session on Day 1 +£65 + VAT
HOW TO BOOK Secure your place online at: www.mainstreamsmart.co.uk If requesting an invoice online, you will be prompted for a purchase order number. Mainstreaming Smarter Travel is organised by Landor LINKS. Landor LINKS connects with every Local Authority in the UK, Central Government, Universities and research bodies, suppliers, consultants, contractors and service providers.
Conference enquiries: Gemma Mensah conferences@landor.co.uk +44(0)207 091 7865
Organised by: Landor LINKS Apollo House 359 Kennington Lane London, SE11 5QY
Professionals depend on us for authoritative information, news and analysis. We deliver this through targeted events, traditional print, such as the respected transport planning and policy journal Local Transport Today, online and through social media.
All bookings are subject to payment terms which can be found at: www.landor.co.uk/smartertravel/terms.php
www.mainstreamsmart.co.uk